


All of the Ordinary

by PenelopeJadewing



Series: Hambleton's Ice Creamery [1]
Category: Hambleton's Ice Creamery, Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, Elves, First Job, Gen, Hambleton's, Ice Cream, Magic, Marcy gets a job, Original Fiction, Slice of Life, Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Werewolves, and his adventure begins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-10-11 20:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 61,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20551937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeJadewing/pseuds/PenelopeJadewing
Summary: 15-year-old Marceline Ross thinks it's high time to get a part-time job. After all, that's what other average, normal kids his age do. In fact, some might say he's a little behind. He gets a regular allowance, but it'd be nice to start earning more than pocket change. Time to add another check on the list of Mediocrity.He sees an ad in the Lorian Herald that a local ice cream shop is looking for a waiter--and it happens to be within bike-riding distance of his cozy suburbian home. Little does he know as he makes the first trip there on his red StreetLord bicycle, that this job will change his young life forever.





	1. trial period

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Welcome to the first chapter of my pet project. This story and its characters are near and dear to my heart. It's a genre I adore, and my sister and I have spent like, four years developing the concept. We want to tell a story that's quaint but heartfelt, and we hope others can come to love it as much as we do.

* * *

From the outside, there wasn’t really anything particularly outstanding about the little brick shop at 4447 Shirley Drive. Marcy had surely seen more impressive businesses, even more impressive ice cream shops, than this rather dinky excuse for a two-story building. There were some such businesses on this very street, in the dusty little shopping plaza that encompassed Hambleton’s Ice Creamery like some kind of defensive wall. Or would that be more like half of a defensive wall? Beyond the shop, the rush of rubber on asphalt rose on the breeze from where the mall stopped short and the parking lot overlooked the freeway; all things considered, not that defensive… that was a bad simile. His literature teacher would be disappointed.

He tried again to look up at the little old building and see it for what he might compare it to. His attention slid from the tufts of grass growing through the gravel at its foundation, up rows of neat tan bricks, over broad storefront windows with white trim. A tower? No, it was only two stories. Two meager stories at that, topped with grey cottage roof. A lighthouse? A beacon? Sounded too important, as if the greater good of some distant magical land rested on the moldy foundations of this building, which certainly could not be the case.

His mind ran far too rapidly out of ideas, so he ultimately just gave up on the whole metaphor thing. Instead he sighed, lowering his gaze back down from the pastel pinks and greens of the quaint Hambleton’s sign to the newspaper clipping pinched tightly in his fingers. His shaking fingers.

It was just an unassuming ice cream shop. So why did he feel so nauseous? His palms felt clammy, stomach lurched as if it were attempting an acrobatics routine at the circus down by the pier…

The ‘Help Wanted’ printed boldly atop the clipping was echoed by a sign in the shop window, right by the front door. Marcy swallowed thickly. 

_You can do this, kiddo, _ he tried to tell himself with something akin to his father’s confidence. _ Your first job. It’s a big step- _

His anxiety spiked dramatically with a pound of his heart and he shook his head like a dog trying to rid himself of that train of thought. He certainly didn’t need to think any more on what a big deal this would—could? Should?—be. He’d been thinking of that the whole bike ride over. He was positive it was turning him prematurely grey, which he definitely didn’t need while attempting to start off high school as unscathed as possible.

No, he had to think of how _ small _ this actually was. How insignificant. It was just a job. It was just an ice cream shop. Nothing major. Nothing life-changing. Just average, everyday kind of stuff. Just a normal high school kid doing a normal thing and getting a part-time job. For money. Because… that’s what jobs were for. 

After one more deep breath, he shoved the clipping into his jeans pocket, hiked his backpack higher, and stepped up to the door to give it a push. It didn’t open. That’s when he noticed the little sign by the door handle that read “Pull”—and at the same time spotted somebody peering at him from just inside. Somebody with big, kite-shaped ears covered in fur planted on top of their head. 

A werewolf. 

For one brief, nerve-fraying second, Marcy met the werewolf’s gaze and immediately jerked his eyes back toward the door handle. His heart pounding louder in his ears, sweat was already gathering on his neck. 

_That was awkward… So awkward._He tried to keep breathing, just relax. No big deal. Just a person… 

He pulled the door open, slipping inside with hopes of drawing as little attention to himself as possible. The little bell over the door dashed all of those hopes away. Amidst the sudden overwhelming smell of all things sugary, several heads turned to glance his way and he dropped his gaze to his WoodNation boots to avoid their attention. For three whole seconds, he stared at those familiar boots, the sueded surface in dusty tan, while simultaneously trying to play it cool. Just smell the sweets, but also give in to his anxiety at the same time. The little rational part of his brain told him he was being silly. 

_I know _ _,_ he told his brain. _ And your point is? _

“Hiya friend!” came a smooth, deep voice from way too close, to his right. Marcy snapped his head up and zeroed in on the source—the werewolf again. Marcy had very little experience with them, and that fact twisted his gut into even tighter knots. 

Indoors, Marcy could make out more details of this person. Contrary to the shop itself, this guy was quite… unique. Aside from being a werewolf obviously, he had a rich, dark caramel complexion, and deep, slanted brown eyes that watched him intently from under a fringe of his shaggy honey-hued hair. One of his wolfish ears, his left, drooped limply while the other stood straight upright and tilted toward Marcy. 

Marcy had all of his attention. That was probably his job, if the turquoise apron and pink name tag were anything to go by. ‘Hye,’ the tag read. 

“Welcome to Hambleton’s,” Hye said, eyes narrowing when he beamed a smile full of jagged teeth and imposing canines. Marcy didn’t know whether to be reassured or intimidated. “Can I help you with anything?” 

“Uh,” was, of course, Marcy’s intellectual first word to one of the people he could possibly end up working with. He cleared his throat, hoping the gesture would clear his brain too. Then he remembered the clipping and, mentally booting himself for stashing it away and wasting time, fished it out of his pocket again. “Um… I saw your ad? In the newspaper?” 

He held the crumpled paper out for Hye to see, trying to pretend his hand wasn’t trembling. _ Cool it, Marcy, nothing’s the matter. Stop being such a clunker… _

Seemingly oblivious to his internal plight, Hye snatched the clipping from him—Marcy briefly noted the white gloves on his hands—and skimmed over it with a ponderous hum. “Right, Dory mentioned… something. You wanna be our new waiter?” 

Marcy blinked once. Waiter? “Th-The article didn’t say—” 

“Well yeah, but I mean, that’s what we really need, I think.” Hye flipped the clipping over in his hand, glanced over the random text on the back, and then was in the process of handing it back when someone else approached them. 

“Hye, table six needs atten—” 

An elf, wearing an apron that matched Hye’s, stopped just shy of the square of light coming through the glass door, which brought him close enough that Marcy could’ve reached out and ruffled his bright bubble-gum pink hair. Which Marcy didn’t do, of course. Not only did the idea make his ears flush hot, but he was also a bit preoccupied gaping at the elf’s face, a face he was positive he recognized from a bunch of his mom’s beauty magazines. 

“Hey, are you—” he started to stammer, before Hye practically dove to interrupt by wagging the newspaper clipping between them. 

“Sunny,” the werewolf blurted, “this kid wants to apply!” 

_Kid? I can’t be that much younger than him, can I…? _

Sunny—or Sundance, as his name tag read—attempted for a brief moment to follow the bouncing ad with his eyes before he pursed his gloss-covered lips and snatched Hye’s wrist to hold it still. The elf took the paper from his coworker and gave it a similar furrow-browed once-over before his dark eyes settled onto Marcy, who had never seen such heavy lashes on a dude, and hot pink to boot. Was that natural? Was that how elves worked? It wasn’t like he’d ever had an up-close conversation with one. There weren’t any at his school. Most said elf kids were too good for normal schools like West Lorian. 

“Sorry,” Sundance offered, serious expression giving way to a small, warm smile that looked right off a cover of _ Charmed _ magazine. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Let me take you to Sam; he’s the boss here.” 

Hye’s ears drooped—or, the right one drooped while the left drooped further. “Why can’t—?” 

Sundance shot him a brief but sharp glance. With one hand, he beckoned Marcy and then pointed a rigid finger, tipped in a long seelie nail covered in professional pink polish, in Hye’s direction. “Table six,” he repeated, before turning to head further into the shop. Each step he took clipped on the checkered tile, and Marcy snuck a glance at his feet—the guy wore high-heeled boots in neon pink and he was still at least seven centimeters shorter than him?—before he dashed to fall in step behind him. 

Despite the unobtrusive exterior, the shop seemed decently active. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, so he spotted several school-age kids around, some in the soft pink booths with minty tables, a few clustered around a pinball machine at the back, others perched on pink stools at the bar—counter? Wasn’t really a bar, calling it a bar felt wrong somehow. All of them were sipping on milkshakes or spooning up sundaes, after all. There were a few adults or parents with kids here and there too, but the patronage seemed primarily made up of the younger crowd. 

Heels clacking away, Sundance led him around the counter, through a portion where the countertop flipped up and the counter wall pushed in, and then gestured toward the pair of swinging kitchen doors nestled in the wall under the chalkboard menu, right behind the antique cash register. Meaning he expected Marcy to go in first. 

With a gulp, Marcy pushed through the portal, and instantly transported from the lively shop atmosphere to a crisp industrial world of appliances and brushed steel counters. Despite the sudden assault of clean grey and white color palette, it still smelled overwhelmingly like chocolate and fresh fruit, with just a hint of soap or something like it. Somewhere to his right, hidden by the door he held open, water was running. To his left, where he could see a bit of movement, voices rose above said water. 

“No touching!” said one, a light voice, a bit snappish. “You’re not allowed to touch. Last time you touched, you ruined. So. No.” 

“Hey, you’re the one who said we were busy,” said the other, deeper, richer, almost cottony. “I’m just trying to help.” 

“You can help by manning the counter like you’re supposed to.” 

“Nobody new was coming in. Seppy stopped in for a drink, but I wasn’t about to ask him to break and help in here.” 

“I mean, you could’ve.” 

“Sam.” 

“Mmhm?” 

Ah, so the first voice was the Sam that Sundance had mentioned. The voice that sounded uptight and rather upset about something… Marcy gulped again. 

“Go on in,” Sundance prompted behind him. “It’s okay.” 

The awkward revelation that the elf was waiting on him was enough to spur him forward one stride, through the door and the rest of the way into the kitchen. That one stride was longer and ganglier than he’d intended though, and his second one was barely a tiptoe to compensate. More than likely, he looked like some kind of drunken crane; just the impression he wanted to make. His neck was sweating again. 

Cool air wafted through the kitchen, easing the flush of his face at least a little bit. As Sundance entered behind him, Marcy swept his gaze over the numerous steel cupboards and counters, the massive freezer directly across from where he stood, double ovens, and a giant industrial sink off to the right, where somebody stood rinsing dishes with the pull-down faucet nozzle. That was the running water from earlier. The door flapped shut behind Sundance and the person at the sink glanced over his shoulder in their direction. 

There was something… off, about the kid’s face. Marcy didn’t appreciate the steely glare, for one, and on top of that, the guy looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Was it really that stressful around here? 

Maybe he should rethink this… 

“Sam,” Sundance said, and Marcy practically flinched as the elf passed by to his left, moving further into the kitchen. Probably because Marcy had once again come to a stand-still and had been lingering there like a weirdo. 

_You’re doing great so far, kiddo. _Marcy ran a hand over his face, hoping maybe that would serve to reset his impression. His brain too. Everyone wanted to hire a bundle of nerves, right? 

Sundance said something to Sam, one of the two men occupying the left end of the kitchen opposite the haggard dishwasher. Marcy wasn’t really paying attention to whatever Sundance said, but he did notice when the elf gestured his way with an open hand and he took that as his cue to step forward, toward them. He attempted to look Sam in the eye with all the faux confidence he could muster, and tried not to flinch when the man held out his hand to shake. 

“You’re responding to the ad, huh?” Sam said, while Marcy clumsied his way through the handshake. 

Sam—who had neatly combed platinum hair parted on the side and a pair of big, round brown eyes lined with distinct lashes—didn’t look very old. Which was surprising, since Marcy always pictured restaurant owners as well-established fifty-somethings. Though he dressed in a minty sweater, faded jeans, and the company apron, this guy was maybe college-age at most, and even then, he had a face as young as Sundance’s. And if your face could be compared to an elf’s, that meant ‘pretty as heck.’ It was an odd thought to think, Marcy decided, the realization that this guy was probably prettier than his mom. By normal human standards, anyway. 

And it managed to be simultaneously surprising and not surprising at all that this was the person who ran this old ice cream shop. 

Dumbly, Marcy nodded in response to Sam’s clarifying question. At least that gave him an idea of what Sundance might’ve said while he was sidetracked with awkwarding, which meant Marcy was less likely to repeat himself and look like an idiot. When Sam released his hand, Marcy tucked it into his jeans pocket and tried to make the action look casual and relaxed. _ Confidence _ _,_ he tried to say with his posture. _ Look how confident I am. _

“Yeah,” he said, glancing absently around at the kitchen again. His attention snagged once more on the person at the sink and caught him watching intently, so Marcy jerked his gaze back. “I’m in high school… seemed…” He shrugged to cover up his struggle to find words to spit out. “Like a logical step. Get a job. The ad mentioned part-time…?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam nodded, “we’re pretty flexible ‘round here. And honestly, it’s the after-school hours that really pinch us anyway, so that could work out great. What’s your name?” 

Marcy blinked and instantly felt like a fool for forgetting to mention that. “Oh, uh… Marcy. Uh, Marceline, I mean. Marceline Ross. Yeah…” 

_Mayday… _

“Cool name,” said Sam, reaching behind himself to untie his apron. “I’m Sam Hambleton. And if you want, Marcy, we can head back to the office and I’ll give you a proper interview before we decide whether or not you’ll be a good fit.” 

Marcy nodded some more, while Sam untangled himself from the apron. Once he was finished, another man, the second speaker from before no doubt, stepped up to take it from him. The white kitchen lights made it impossible to miss this guy’s pale purple hair, propped up over a teal bandana that matched the wide gauges in his earlobes. Sam handed over the apron with a brief look of mild exasperation, before he sighed and turned back to Marcy. 

He gestured back out the way Marcy came in. “Just follow me.” 

For a brief, panic-inducing second, Marcy drew a blank. His brain fumbled desperately to figure out what he was supposed to do in response to that contradictory combination of action and word. Move forward, with the gesture? Wait and follow, at the words? Thankfully, Sam didn’t make him suffer too long before he walked ahead and out the kitchen doors. Holding back a sigh of his own, Marcy fell into step behind him, and waved a little when Sundance wished him luck, before the kitchen doors swung shut behind him.

At the back of the building, down a little hall and in the opposite corner from the restrooms, Hambleton’s had a small office space, with an antique desk and chair, an umbrella lamp, a big bookshelf covered in a rainbow of spines, a fake potted plant in the back corner, and a dozen framed pictures hung in seemingly random places on the cream-colored walls. Marcy recognized Sundance, Hye, and the purple haired man in several of them.

“All right, well…” Sam made his way behind the desk and flopped down into the plushy-looking leather office chair. “Let’s get started.”

Over the next twenty minutes or so, Sam asked all of the usual sort of interview questions—his age, why he wanted to work there, what he could offer as an employee, if he had any experience, how was he with people. The most stressful bits were hypothetical scenarios, and when Sam asked for any references Marcy might have that could vouch for him. All things considered, Marcy thought he kept a fairly level head and gave all of the usual sorts of answers—he was just a 15-year-old looking for his first job, had little experience but was open to just about anything. He did his best with the hypotheticals, and jotted down his parents’ and West Lorian High’s phone numbers when prompted.

Just as he was handing that innocent little piece of paper back to the man across the desk, the office door opened behind him, letting in a wave of crowd noise from the shop outside. Marcy jumped and jerked himself around to see who’d so suddenly intruded upon his fragile peace of mind.

The dishwasher. Or, the guy who’d been washing dishes… He looked even more worn out and pale up close, older than the first impression, and the dull grey of his baggy hoodie wasn’t doing him any favors. His jaw-length, messy black hair made him look like some kind of bum or something, and Marcy couldn’t help but fidget under the intensity with which the shorter man—elf? He had pointed ears, just like Sundance—eyed him from the shadow of his bangs.

“Sam,” the guy said, his voice sounding just about as tired as he looked, comparable to the moan of an old door, “you forgot that machine doesn’t like Dori.”

Sam peered up from his phone, where Marcy presumed he was saving those numbers. “He didn’t break it, did he?”

“No, it just refuses to work for him.”

While Marcy glanced awkwardly back and forth from his place between the two, Sam let out a slow breath. “Okay… I’ll be there in a minute.”

“A hot minute. He’s trying to ‘fix’ it.”

“Well,” Sam said, “tell him to stop!”

At this, the dishwasher allowed himself a grimace, bearing his teeth with a groan and revealing something that made Marcy’s blood run cold.

Fangs. Big, gleaming fangs, twice as long as Hye’s werewolf canines, caught and held Marcy’s stare even after they disappeared behind the man’s pale lips. Pale… oh, everything made a frightening sort of sense now. The ears, the hair, the hoodie, the bags under those oddly piercing eyes, the pallid hue of his skin that made it look as though he could be dead… That was because he _ was _ dead.

He was a vampire.

Hambleton’s Ice Creamery had hired a vampire. Any feasible reason why was lost on Marcy, drowned under the shudder that threatened to betray the sudden chill that made the hair on his arms raise.

“Whatever,” the vampire grumbled before he stepped back out into the hall and, without a second glance, closed the door behind him. Just like that, he was gone. After he’d been so close, too close. A silence followed, not one that was particularly odd or outstanding, but to Marcy, it lasted far too long for comfort. No, silence was a poor follow up to this new discovery, and it only allowed that uncomfortable knot to twist in his stomach and make each tick of the wall clock sound off louder than it had any right to be.

What should he do? It would be both rude and suspicious if he suddenly just blurted ‘hey actually, just changed my mind; I think I’ll go home and hide in my bed for an hour before looking for a different job elsewhere.’ He did really need a job… and this place seemed nice overall, except for… that person. Was he ready to deal with that? He wasn’t sure.

“Well then,” said Sam, leaning back in his chair with an air of conclusion. Marcy got the idea that the interview was about to end, and positively. That should have been a relief. It wasn’t. “You seem like a nice kid, Marcy… I can see you fitting in well with us, even if you’ll need some practice. But you’d have Hye and Sunny to help you out, and with the rest of us here, you’d be in good hands…” He scratched the back of his head. “I’ll give these numbers a call, but I think everything checks out so far. If we were to hire you, how would you feel about starting Monday, next week?”

That was in four days. Marcy gulped, once again and tried not to make it obvious just how much his palms were sweating. Four days didn’t leave him a lot of time, no time to think, no time to prepare… He needed that time. He needed to think this over. Maybe he needed to talk to his dad. Maybe he didn’t know what he needed, but it wasn’t to just sign himself over to this fate so easily.

“Would…” he found himself saying, tongue coated lead. “Would it be okay if… I had a trial period? Or, something… just. To make sure I do okay…?”

That… seemed like a decent idea. He could test the waters. Seemed normal enough, Marcy figured, like he wanted see if this gig really was up his alley, see if he could make it work… Maybe he wouldn’t be working with that guy much. Maybe he’d stay in the back, and Marcy would be a waiter like Hye said. He could handle that without accidentally causing problems. And the vampire might be more comfortable too… young blood, and all that. He didn’t want to be a distraction for anybody.

Yeah, this could work. So long as Sam agreed…

The man in question pursed his lips, thoughtful for a moment before he nodded. “Sure, I’m okay with that. Maybe two weeks?”

“Um… yeah.” As permanent as a sub, until Marcy got a handle on things. And if he really wanted to, he could always just back out at the end of two weeks. No harm, no foul. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

After that, it was just a matter of bidding Sam thank you and good evening before Marcy was able to get on his way. Hye gave him an enthusiastic farewell on his way out the door, so much so that several of the patrons looked up to see what all the fuss was about, which Sundance seemed to scold him for. Marcy used the distraction as opportunity to duck out as quickly as possible and hoped it just seemed like he needed to get home for dinner. Which was half true, of course.

While the evening sun was growing peachier by the minute, he straddled his much-loved cherry red StreetLord bicycle, shrugged his backpack higher and pedaled away, settling in for the ride home with a full brain. He had lots to think about. 

Hambleton’s, and the little plaza it nested in, was conveniently close to home, in Bushfort. It sat just outside the city limits, on the border Bushfort shared with it’s larger, busier sibling suburb of Honeyvale. Only an twelve minute drive with regular traffic, and Marcy could easily match that using the bike paths. Compared to some other jobs he’d found in the paper, some all the way on the other side of Lore and requiring a late subway trip every day, this commute was a breeze. In fact, there were a lot of good things about this job that would make it perfect for just about any kid looking for an easy entry-level. And yet…

There was the vampire. And that alone was enough to make him want to slam on the E-brake for this whole cockamamie scheme of his. He’d wanted to show he was ready for this chapter in his life, ready to start on the long road toward adulthood. But screw easing into this growing-up thing, screw being a man. It wasn’t worth his neck. Marcy didn’t like to think badly of anybody, but he’d heard enough stories from his father’s time in the force to know it was in a human’s best interest to steer clear of vampires.

Thanks to their lifestyle, or what Marcy knew of it, he very rarely saw them. As far as he knew, there wasn’t a single vampire living in Bushfort. He had a vague awareness of them, knew they existed in more populated parts of the city, but they were creatures of the night life. Shadowy, nocturnal things he’d had nightmares about as a kid. Of course, they couldn’t be blamed for his eight-year-old self watching horror films with his friends during sleepovers, but he most definitely had never expected to find one working a regular nine-to-five in a rinky-dink strip mall. During the day. While the sun was up. 

And an ice cream shop? Could vampires even eat ice cream? He’d always thought they could only eat blood. 

_Young blood. _

Marcy hit the brakes at the end of the parking lot and glanced back, searching the store fronts. Despite the autumn heat, he couldn’t tame the cold feeling that was settling to his bones, or the brief regard to the wallet in his back pocket. He had a little money from this month’s allowance… Maybe… maybe, while he was thinking about it, he should get something… just in case. He spotted a promising sign and, with a sigh, turned the bike around and backtracked.

Five minutes and a new purchase later, he was back on the road and headed off, taking the back route out of the plaza and onto the old brick streets of Bushfort. He knew the neighborhood, and the general route that would take him just where he needed to go: home. 

Bushfort wasn’t much as far as suburbs went. Less than ten thousand people, twenty minutes from the metro, with lingering phantoms of the classic “main street” kinda town it used to be before Lore flooded over with people and became the geographical giant it was now. It was quaint, quiet. No rowdy crowds, not as much crime… Most of the population was made up of humans, as far as Marcy knew. He appreciated the shade of the caged cherry trees as he peddled past the corner store, waved at the old ladies coming out of George’s Pharmacy, stopped at the single street light on Main and watched the automobiles rumble past. Several drivers raised a few fingers off their steering wheels in passive greeting, and he returned the favor from his handlebars until the light changed and he was off again.

He didn’t know a lot of these people, but they probably knew him. That’s what happened when you played sports in small towns, not to mention if your dad was a well-known deputy. And Marcy was pretty sure that in the same way, if there was a vampire living within city limits, everyone would know about it. Bushfort folks liked to talk, and when they talked vampires, it was with a slight tremble at best, the bite of contempt at worst. Marcy hated the latter. 

But slotting himself in with the former made him feel guiltier than he thought it would. He couldn’t quite pinpoint why… They could be dangerous, sure. Deputy Ross hid details from his family, but Marcy knew how to surf the internet. He’d read articles. But despite that, vampires were still supposed to be… semi-normal people. Right?

He thought of the way the one at Hambleton’s had glared at him, a perfect stranger, and had to wonder.

In a total of ten blocks, most of them making up the grid through the middle-class neighborhood where he’d spent the entirety of his childhood, he rolled up to a small yellow ranch-style home with white trim and hedges under the windows, where the pristine white mailbox read 7412 Vernon St. With practiced efficiency, he hopped the curb, coasted up the driveway and jumped off the bike in time to bring it to a full stop at the edge of the walk that led to the door. After laying the bike on its side in the grass, he jogged the rest of the way to the rust red door, spotted movement through the frosted glass of the oval window, and paused with his hand on the knob.

They would ask about it. The interview. They’d want to know how it went. He could mention the vampire… and that would be the end of it. They wouldn’t let him take the job. He wouldn’t have a choice. 

_But… maybe I can handle this… _Yeah! He could. Maybe he just needed to suck it up and muscle through it. That’s what his dad did when his job got tough, uncomfortable. He just had to remember why he wanted the job in the first place. For the money. And maybe even to prove he wasn’t a kid anymore. That’d be nice.

Yes. He _ would _handle this. 

Marcy took a deep breath, and entered the foyer.

Just inside, Sibyl was busy dusting the coat rack. She paused as he closed the door behind him, duster stilling and sharp brown eyes—the ones that marked the two of them as siblings—narrowing just enough to make him straighten his shoulders upon entering. Why, he couldn’t say. 

Her thin, adolescent lips quirked up on one side. “Marcy’s back!” she called into the house, the duster beginning to move again, bouncing along the rack’s shelf. “How’d it go?”

He shrugged, both at her question and to slip the backpack from his shoulders and let it swing to the floor. “Okay.”

“Where’d you get the necklace?”

Instinctively, his fingers rose to press the new weight of the small silver pendant into the dip of his collarbone where it rested. His most recent purchase… His fingertips ghosted over the engraved ‘M’ for a second, before he dropped his hand back to his side. His sister’s suspicion simmered on her face.

“I just—” he began, trying to come up with something. Something other than the truth. Why was he only thinking of this now and not when he had several blocks to mentally prepare an excuse? No, he’d only just figured out what he wanted to do… he wasn’t ready for questions yet!

“Is it from a girl?” Sibyl prompted, and the heat returned to Marcy’s neck full-force.

He shook his head vehemently, eager to dissuade her of this particular theory as quickly as possible. “No, it’s… I just wanted one, that’s all. Is that so weird?”

“You never wear jewelry. Except for those boring old mini hoops.” She grinned at his discomfort and he withered.

“They’re not boring…”

“They’re all you wear.”

“That… doesn’t make them boring.” He sidestepped past her, the foyer feeling much too small with both of them in it. The kitchen, and the smell wafting from it in particular, beckoned him. Much more enticing than this conversation.

“Yeah it does,” Sibyl said to his back. “And you know Mom’s gonna make you pick up your backpack!”

“Then I’ll do it when she does.” Leaving it at that, Marcy navigated through the living room, past the olive green sofas and circle-pattern rug, and the moment he came in view of the kitchen and its antique striped walls, a woman popped up from behind the island counter, short brunette curls in a mess over her eyes.

“Marcy!” his mother said, somehow able to distinguish him from behind her mop top. She puffed her cheeks and blew the fringe in an attempt to clear her vision and then, when that failed, gave her head a good shake. That was marginally more successful, and he was able to make out the blue of her eyes. 

“Welcome home!” Francis Ross beamed at him and reached for the sink to rinse her hands. “How was your day?”

He knew what she was really asking about was the job thing, but if he jumped straight to that, she’d tell him she wanted to know all of it, so it was just better to sum everything up as briefly as possible. “Okay. Had a pop quiz in math, which bit, but then Jasper got hit in the face with a frisbee during PE, so that was fun.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” she scolded, but only half-heartedly. She knew what Jasper was like. She snatched up the towel from where she had it hanging over her shoulder, drying her hands while Marcy hopped onto one of the bar stools at the counter. He watched the question dance in her eyes, just begging to be spoken despite the way she regarded him with a fond smile as he settled in. 

After he took a particularly deep breath, it seemed she could tame her curiosity no longer. 

“How did it go?” she asked, positioning herself directly across from him and grinning. “With the job?”

He pursed his lips. The moment of truth… 

Or not-truth. She was so happy for him already, and she didn’t even know anything. How quickly would that smile go away if he mentioned why he was no longer sure he wanted the job? Which wasn’t entirely true either. He did want the job. He wanted a job, he wanted cash, and this was the closest, most logical option for both. 

He could handle this.

So he nodded to appease her. “Good, I think… It sounds like they’ll hire me—”

Her gasp of delight cut him off from further explanation and he stuttered to a halt to save his breath. Meanwhile, she beamed rays of excitement and reached across the counter to squeeze his hand. Marcy squinted instinctively, as if that might protect him from the intensity of her enthusiasm.

“Ohhh, my little man,” she said, giving his hand a little wiggle against the counter. He almost felt like she was trying to infect him with her energy, like she should be able to shake his hand and in turn, he’ll start bouncing in his seat for joy or something.

Still. She’d never called him ‘little man’ before. That was new. Kind of weird.

“I’m so proud of you,” she finished, grin stuck on her face now. “You excited?”

“Uh…” He blinked, trying to find an appropriate response in the face of… all that. “Not yet… Probably because Mr. Hambleton—er, the boss—said he wants to call you first to check stuff, so it’s not like it’s. You know, official or anything?”

“Uh huh.” She just smiled wider and stepped back to lean down, peering into the oven at something. “Well, _ I’m _excited. Did you ask what the pay is?”

Marcy sniffed a little; he thought he could smell tomato sauce of some kind. What was she concocting this time? “Mm-hmm. Seven zees an hour. With a raise later if I stick around.”

His mother made a show of looking impressed, waggling her eyebrows. At the same time, she opened up the oven, letting out a waft of ominously visible fumes. “A whole zinno higher than minimum wage, how nice. You’ll buy us a trip to Feiai when you’re rich, right?”

Marcy blinked slowly. “Um…” 

“Honey, I’m kidding.”

“Uh huh.”

Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, she chuckled to herself and slipped on the fluffy pair of imitation wool oven mitts that were sitting on the countertop beside her. She reached into the oven belly and withdrew a foil-topped pan that seeped steam from the edges. “You could buy _ you _a trip to Feiai, though. Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

“Maybe.”

She deposited the pan atop a hotplate beside the stovetop and gingerly peeled back the foil, revealing some sort of white cheese-topped casserole. It didn’t look half bad, actually. Marcy leaned forward a little to try and catch a whiff.

“Well, I’m beginning to wonder if you find anything exciting,” she said with a crooked smile. She leaned her palms on the edge of the counter and fixed him with a stare, eyes narrowed as if he was a puzzle she could solve just by looking at him. “There must be something, right?”

The casserole smelled strongly of basil and garlic. He sniffed again, and rubbed an itch from his nose. “I don’t… I’m okay with. Well, with not-excitement. Excitement is kinda tiring, I guess.”

“Says Mr. All-Star of the middle school baseball and football teams,” she countered with a small wink.

He fidgeted in his seat. “That’s different…”

“Hm. I still think there’s gotta be something that could get you excited. I’ve seen you excited, I know you.” She removed the mitts and from one of the many kitchen drawers, fished out a knife and spatula. “Should I guess? Hmmm…” As she pondered, she started slicing through the casserole, releasing more steam and making the cheese stretch. “Action movies.”

“Kinda…”

“Puppies.”

“I guess…”

“The YMAL.”

“Not really.”

“How about my cooking?”

“Eh…”

She slapped down the knife with much more force than necessary and, after he jumped from his seat, pointed a finger at him. A satisfied smirk spread across her lips, which he eyed with an appropriate level of skepticism.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “I know what gets you excited.”

He raised an eyebrow at the level of unwavering confidence in her voice. He wasn’t kidding though. In all honesty, there really wasn’t much that caught his interest, not in the way she meant it. Not much was worth the wow. He didn’t see that as a problem either, but humoring her was always better than arguing. He knew that from time-tested experience. So he braced his elbows on the counter, propped his chin on his palm and waited for her to finish with her theory so he could head for the dining room.

“Going on rides in your grandfather’s car.” Her smile widened, hesitating long enough to look him in the eye and let the words sink in before she headed over to the corner cupboard to fetch a stack of plates. “Visiting his old garage. I _ know _you like that.”

Ah, Papa’s car… That sleek, classic beauty. Glossy cherry red, gleaming chrome trim, tan leather interior, white-wall tires. Now that was a car. Marcy felt the corners of his mouth twitch, and he pursed his lips quickly to hide it, ducking his head.

“Aha! I knew it,” she laughed.

“Okay… I’ll give you that one.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, trying to hide a wash of embarrassment that threatened to turn him red again.

“Mm-hm, see, I know you.” She set the plates on the counter between them. Her smile turned gentler, almost wistful. “And I bet this job will be exciting for you too. And you know, if it’s not and it ends up not being your thing… that’s okay. You should always look for a job that you personally find thrilling.”

When she tapped the top of the plate stack, Marcy immediately stood up and went over to gather them. He glanced sidelong at her as he did, catching her slipping the mitts on again. “Is that why you’re still an EMT?”

“Of course.” She offered him a sidelong smile in return. “It’s rough, but I love my job.”

On the other side of the house, the front door scuffed open and closed with a dull _ thud _that lightly shook the walls. Dad’s usual entrance. Nobody else made the house shudder like that when they shut the door. Sure enough, a familiar baritone called out not a second later. 

“I’m home!” A brief pause followed, and Marcy could make out the rustle of fabric. Probably Dad taking off his coat. “Marcy back?”

“Yeah,” Marcy answered himself, picking up the plates. Now that everyone was at home, dinner could really begin, and that casserole was looking more appetizing the later it got. 

“You left your backpack in the entryway again, kiddo.”

Marcy winced, at the same time his mother clicked her tongue and murmured his name before shouting her own response.

“He’ll pick it up! You’re just in time, sweetie, we’re about to put eggplant parm on the table!”

Oh… so that’s what that was.

“Sounds good.” From the tone in his father’s voice, Marcy got the impression that he was as skeptical about the looming meal as Marcy was. Still. Hunger waits for no man. And Richard Ross was always starving when he got home after a long day on patrol.

“Fetch Sibyl and then we can all sit down, and Marcy can tell you all about the job thing!”

“Oh, right, the job thing…”

The house then came alive with the sounds of dinnertime. Marcy found himself roped into setting the table and dishing out portions, and then over the course of the next hour or so, recounted his conversation with his mother in the presence of his father and little sister. He described the friendly werewolf and the elf, whom he was still positive he’d seen in his mother’s magazines (his sister said he was too boring to meet an actual celebrity, so she doubted this claim). He conveniently avoided mention of the vampire, and none of them seemed to notice his awkward glossing, or his necklace. Thank everything, Sibyl didn’t say a word about it. Marcy found himself almost relaxing.

Almost.

“How was your day, sweetie?” his mother at one point turned to ask Dad.

After sipping his iced tea, Dad sighed, the creases in his forehead deepening. “Tough day. Tough day… Chandler raided a coven this morning; apparently they managed to put curses on two of our guys before Silverston got them. We got three out of seven. No licenses, no wand permits. Just another group of punks who thought it’d be cool to try throwing some sparkles around, I guess. ”

Marcy didn’t know much about magic, so he didn’t look up from his parm, but he caught his mother leaning forward from the corner of his eye. She put a hand over her mouth in a moment of concern, and then removed it to speak.

“Not serious curses, I hope?”

“Nah, just a basic trance, Silverston said. He fixed them up pretty quick.” Dad took a quick bite before he continued. “He had a lot more work cut out for him after that riot we had to break up this afternoon.”

“Oh, that vampire attack,” Mom tsked and shook her head. “I saw a bit of that on the news. I wondered if you were there.” 

_Vampires?_ Marcy glanced up from his plate. _ An attack? _ “Yeah, they just… It’s everything we can do to keep them in line these days. They walked into an anti-vamp convenience store. Broad daylight.”

Mom scoffed. “The pills again?”

“Must’ve been. By the time we showed up, the manager had chased them out, but they’d essentially started a brawl. Three civilians were in…” He hesitated, eyes shifting briefly to Sibyl, who was listening with rapt attention. “Uh, bad shape.”

Marcy gulped, despite not having anything left to swallow down but the shiver creeping up his spine.

Dad shook his head. “Phillips wasted a few rounds on one of them, poor kid. Didn’t know what to do when it got right back up again and turned on him. I don’t think he’d ever dealt with them directly before. You know Silverston is the best with containment.”

“Must be nice to be able to conjure walls from thin air,” Mom said, patting her mouth down with her napkin. Then she stood. “All right, are we all finished now? I made molasses cookies again for dessert.”

And that was that. The conversation moved on from vampires as if nothing serious had been discussed. Usually, Marcy never paid Dad’s work stories a second thought. They were distant, separate from everything Marcy knew, like tales from another world. Vampire incidents had never directly effected his life. Until today, of course. Now all he could think about were those pale, slitted eyes waiting for him at the edge of town, and he hoped his parents wouldn’t notice the way he couldn’t look at them.

He clung to the feeble foundations of his resolve, reminding himself that he’d already decided what to do. He’d bought the necklace and everything! Vampires didn’t like silver. He’d be fine. 

When all was said and done, he managed to get through the rest of the evening without any further incident, which he thought was a feat in and of itself. Sibyl had dish duty, so Marcy was free to retreat to his room to play Rogue Sentinel and plunk away at his homework.

He went to bed that night having won five rounds in a row and feeling rather self-satisfied about it. He lay in the dark and let the satisfaction sink in, bleed into his thoughts about the day as a whole. Sure, his father had stories... But unlike many others who might’ve taken this job, he could use those stories as guides. Warnings. And Marcy could take care of himself. He’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d answered a job ad, gone through an interview, and made an executive decision, all by himself. And his mom had called him her little man. He could do without the ‘little’ part… but the ‘man’ sounded nice.

Yeah. He could totally handle this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As this is my first (public) original work, I want to hear from readers! I'd love to hear what you think. And if you're interested in seeing more of this project, you can check out our [deviantArt](https://www.deviantart.com/penelopejadewing)!


	2. game start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So begins the craziness. Marcy should've known it would be a day for first impressions, but somehow, everything's catching him off guard anyway.

* * *

The next time Marcy rolled up to 4447 Shirley Drive on his trusty bike, he’d already taken a spare minute to drop his cumbersome backpack off at home first, and arrived thoroughly preoccupied wrestling with the periwinkle polka-dotted tie his mother had strung too tightly around his neck. As soon as she’d heard him talk about turquoise aprons, mint tables and pink decorations, she’d jumped at the chance to color coordinate. It wasn’t even the right kind of blue, but it was apparently the brightest tie his father owned. Had it been his choice, Marcy would’ve gone with a black one—or heck, forgone the tie altogether, since it wasn’t like the place was all that formal or anything. He didn’t need to look like the caterer at a wedding.

A really weird wedding with a polka dot theme…

He sighed just a little and stepped up to the door once more. This time, he gave the sign a fleeting glance and made sure to pull as it instructed. Over his head, the bell gave its cheerful jingle and he tried his best not to shrink into himself, knowing now that the attention of however many patrons would be drawn straight to him again.

The house was as full today as it had been last time he was here. It was a Monday for goodness sake; didn’t everybody hate Mondays? Then again, maybe that’s why they were here. Ice cream was a pretty good pick-me-up. Marcy preferred staying at home and playing video games, though.

Once he allowed a proper beat of time to pass between his entrance and he was sure nobody would be staring anymore, he raised his gaze to scan the interior, looking closer now than he had before. He hadn’t taken the time to really get a good look at the place. Along the left-most wall, where the storefront windows stretched all the way to the back wall on that side, half a dozen booths seated smiling, happy customers on baby-pink upholstery. Just inside that barrier, in the middle of the checkerboard tiles that layered the floor, a smattering of small, round tables with tall stools for chairs seated some more smiling, happy customers. Then, at the minty-colored counter along the right-most wall, near the baked goods displays, six barstools seated… yes, even more customers. Marcy swallowed thickly.

These were all people and places he would have no choice but to interact with, if that werewolf’s prediction was accurate. If he was, indeed, to become a waiter. He’d have to actually _talk_ to these people. All of them. That thought was enough to make sweat break out across his neck, make him tug a little at the collar that still felt like it was strangling him.

Then his gaze skimmed over the kitchen doors behind the counter. A steely glare and razor-sharp fangs circled in his mind. Ah… yes, somehow, that felt even more frightening than the crowd. His fingers drifted from his collar and found the silver pendant through the cotton of his button-up shirt, reassuring himself of its presence. Hopefully, it really was genuine plated silver, or else he spent those seventeen zinnos for nothing…

A ruckus of voices went up at the very back of the room, loud enough that a dozen heads turned, Marcy included. He peered over several tables to a cluster of people—kids?—gathered against the far wall, circling what had to be some kind of arcade console. Oh, that’s right, the pinball machine! Standing in the player position with his back to the storefront… was that the werewolf? What was his name…

“Hye,” rang a clear voice over the murmur of the patronage and the striking pink figure that was the resident elf appeared to tap the werewolf on the shoulder. “Can you help me with table twelve?”

Ah, right. Hye. How could Marcy have forgotten that name?

Hye bobbed his head and stepped away from the game. He waved his gloved hands at the kids who surged to snag his now-vacant place. “Don’t break my high score while I’m gone!”

“Ha,” said one of the others, some guy with blond hair and brown roots, “that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”

As Hye laughed and turned away from his little game posse to follow the elf—Sundance! That was his name—the werewolf’s eyes swept the room and zeroed in on Marcy like he was looking for him. For some reason, Marcy found himself standing straighter but unsure of what to do with his face. Should he smile? Nod? Wave? Blink? Maybe blink, yes, blinking was natural.

In response to Marcy staring like an owl on caffeine, Hye’s entire countenance brightened, his ears perked up (or at least, one of them did; the floppy one just twitched a little) and he raised his arm to give a broad, enthusiastic wave, like one might do if they saw someone they knew at the other end of the block.

For lack of a better response, Marcy lifted a tentative hand and wiggled his fingers back. No way was he matching the energy in that wave.

“Hey!” Hye greeted, heedless of how his voice seemed to shatter the atmosphere like a clap of thunder. Marcy very suddenly wanted to turn around and march right back out of the shop, just to hide from the attention he knew this would draw. “Marcy!”

Sundance, attention caught by his fellow waiter’s antics just like everybody on the premises, followed Hye’s gaze and spotted Marcy as well. His pink eyebrows rose, and then he gave Hye a elbow nudge to the arm. “Don’t yell like that! You’ll scare everybody.”

“Everybody here knows I’m loud, though,” Hye countered. Marcy glanced around at the numerous customers and, indeed, hardly anyone was still looking anymore. A few children were watching Hye in that spacey way kids did, and one or two older folks spared him a glance as he talked, but beyond that, they seemed accustomed to his volume. How long would it take him to get to that point, Marcy wondered?

Sundance sighed heavily, but one corner of his mouth quirked in something like a smile. Then he gave Hye another nudge. “Just help him out.”

“What about table twelve?”

“I’ll handle it.”

Hye nodded, bent ear flopping. “Mm’kay.” Without any further deliberation between them, the werewolf flounced his way across the space between himself and where Marcy stood, while Sundance headed over to the massive booth tucked in the back corner, where at least eight people waited. For a fleeting moment, Marcy felt a bit bad for pulling either of the waiters away if there was some kind of large group event happening, but then Sundance himself had told Hye to come over, so…

“Hey, that’s a fun tie,” Hye commented as soon as he stood alongside Marcy. And he did so quite literally; rather than face him and speak like most people, the werewolf swiveled and positioned himself next to him, facing the same direction and talking to him sidelong. “Pretty color!”

“Oh, uh…” Marcy peered down at those polka dots dubiously, “thanks… My mom’s idea, if I’m being honest.”

“Well then, I like her already.” Hye beamed the same broad, toothy grin as he had the last time Marcy was here, and it was just as disconcerting this time as it was then. His canines jutted out from the other uniform pearly whites and came to fair points at the ends, though not pinprick sharp like vampire fangs. Only slightly less intimidating. “So! I get to show you the ropes, then. Sam’s baking in the kitchen right now and we try to avoid leaving the kitchen to Dory as much as possible, so it’s probably best not to distract him.”

“Right…” With a sudden bout of recollection, Marcy reached back along the edge of his tucked-in shirt and his fingers found the edges the envelope he’d tucked in his waistband before he left home. It had been too big to stuff in his jeans pockets without crumpling, and his back pockets were a dangerous place to put things while riding a bike (he’d found this out first hand last year when he lost the keys to his bike safety padlock). He held the envelope out between them, though not entirely sure if he needed to give it to Hye or wait. “My mom had me print this out, um… Tax stuff? She said Mr. Hambleton would need it.”

When Hye outright giggled in response, Marcy wasn’t sure what to do with that. He was pretty sure what he’d just said wasn’t funny in any way. Maybe he had a weird expression on his face when he said it. Maybe someone his age ought to know more about taxes. Or maybe there was just some inside joke he was missing out on.

“Mr. Hambleton,” Hye repeated, obviously amused judging by the curve of his eyes and the way he instinctively hid his mouth, which was still split in a smile. “Okay, yeah, sure. Um, we can drop that off at his desk real quick. We have to grab your apron anyway. Come on.”

So the amusement had been because of the name. Maybe nobody called Sam that? But no way was Marcy about to just use his first name; he’d only just met the guy and he was his _boss_ for goodness’ sake. He wanted to be professional here. He wanted to make a decent impression, be a good worker.

Marcy blinked and realized Hye was already three steps ahead and he lurched to follow after him, envelope still hovering in his outstretched hand. They made a beeline around the many little tables, heading toward the hallway at the back, just past the pinball machine where all those kids were still playing.

As they passed, one of the girls hovering along the edge of the console practically flagged Hye down. “Hey, hey, hey, Jeff just beat your high score!”

Hye stopped in his tracks and his face morphed with instant distaste, as if the announcement had personally offended him. Marcy reined in just in time to avoid bumping into his back, while Hye sputtered a response.

“No way, that was so fast!” Then, just as soon as it had come, the displeasure flipped right back into the beaming grin, and he held out an enthusiastic thumbs up in their direction. “Great job! Now I’ll have to up my game when I come back to beat you again later.”

“In your dreams,” said the player, who Marcy assumed was Jeff, the kid with the blond hair with dark roots from before. “You’ll have to beat thirty-seventy.”

“Ho boy.” Hye rubbed his hands together. “Enjoy the stardom while it lasts. I’ll come for my crown again soon!”

They all laughed and Marcy felt strikingly out of place, like someone watching a conversation from inside a fish bowl. Thankfully, Hye moved on and continued their route down the hall.

“Friends of yours?” Marcy asked by way of making conversation as they went, which was honestly better than awkward silence if he was going to be working here for the foreseeable future.

Hye shrugged as he opened the door to Sam’s office. “Not really. We’ve just been playing all afternoon, so we’ve got a thing going.”

Marcy raised his eyebrows as a response, despite the fact that Hye’s back was turned so it wasn’t as if he would see it. They seemed awfully familiar for ‘not really’ friends. It seemed above and beyond standard cordiality offered by usual wait staff, but maybe that was just the standard here?

“So,” Hye said, stopping in front of the desk and spreading his arms out wide, “this is the office. You’ve been here before already. Sam’s desk, computer, fax machine, printer…” He touched the objects as he listed them off, and then glanced over his shoulder at Marcy. He gave the desk top an extra pat. “You can leave the tax stuff here and he’ll get to it later.”

“Right…” Marcy gingerly stepped alongside the werewolf and set the envelope down where he’d indicated. In the meantime, Hye moved back and looked aimlessly about the room.

“Did you meet everybody else already?” Hye asked.

Marcy thought of the faces he’d seen when he first came—the guy with light purple hair, and of course… the vampire. Sucking in a quick sigh, he shook his head. “Um, no… not. Not officially, or anything. I met… you and Sundance and Mr. Hambleton…” When he turned to face him, he found Hye fighting another amused grin, this time with marginally more success.

“Mm-hm,” Hye said, nodding and pinching his chin between his gloved fingers in contemplation. “Well, you’ll meet them all eventually, but.” He turned toward the pictures scattered across the wall. From the faces Marcy did and didn’t know, he pointed out the face of the purple-haired guy, in a photo of him and Sam standing side by side with their arms over each other’s shoulders. He was wearing a bandanna in this photo too, but it was pink instead of teal. “That’s Dory! D-O-R-I, he likes it that way, not with a Y. He manages the books and_ tries_ to help in the kitchen.”

Marcy recalled the name as the one the vampire had spoken when he interrupted the interview, the mention of machines misbehaving, and the conversation he overheard when he first stepped into the kitchen. Sam forbidding someone from helping. That was probably Dori too, then. He nodded once to demonstrate that he had heard and understood the information, but Hye was already starting up again.

“This is Giuseppe,” the werewolf moved his hand to a different picture. Marcy expected his finger to fall over the dead-eyed face he’d been avoiding thinking about since the interview, but instead, Hye pointed at a face he hadn’t seen yet, in the shop or anywhere else. The young man in the silly group photo was human as far as Marcy could tell, had short, bright ginger hair, golden eyes and a beaming smile that seemed just as broad as Hye’s was but infinitely less disconcerting. Maybe it was the lack of fangs. “He’s our shakerboarder, so you might not see him a lot during the day.”

Marcy’s eyebrows pinched at the middle and he tilted his head a little. “Shakerboarder…?”

“He takes a sign for the shop and goes out to show it off on busy roads.”

Oh, Marcy had seen those people before. He always thought it looked like the most boring job in the world, having to stand out there for hours, watching cars go by, making a fool of yourself seemingly for nothing. Not to mention the heat. Count him out of that one.

“Okay…” he murmured, but again, Hye’s hand had already started moving. This time, it went right where he thought it would.

Hye’s gloved finger tapped the glass over a pale face, icy eyes glaring at whomever had been unlucky enough to be holding the camera at the time. “That’s Ji. He’s… well, he’s Ji. He stays in the back and does dishes until everybody’s gone, then he comes out and does a lot of the cleaning. Sunny and I help sometimes with big messes.”

Simultaneously, relief and fear came out to wage war in Marcy’s throat, making him swallow to try and stifle them back down. A tickle of heat rose along the back of his neck.

On one hand, if this Ji was essentially the custodian and stayed in the back all day, that bumped Marcy’s chances of having to figure out how to handle interacting with him down to near non-existence. He’d be able to go about the majority of his afternoon work hours in relative peace and focus all of his anxiety on dealing with customers instead, which seemed a thousand times less intimidating in the face of the glare Ji was giving the taker of that photograph.

But on the other hand… his shift lasted from 4PM to 8PM, which was the shop’s official closing time. He’d looked it up. Mostly because he was a little concerned about whether or not he’d be traversing his way home in the dark, once the sun started setting earlier in just a few weeks. Bushfort was a small town, the crime rate was fairly low, but still, he couldn’t help but imagining a dark figure behind the shop, just waiting to pounce before he had the chance to leave. Of course, the likelihood of that depended entirely on how hungry the vampire was after a long day’s work.

Which was something Marcy could neither detect or control, which meant he’d be hoofing it out of there as fast as his bike would take him. Every night. That didn’t sound pleasant. Like, at all. He thought of the necklace tucked under his shirt; could a wimpy trinket like that actually do anything? Or was it all just a bunch of hooey? How would he know if it didn’t work, until it was too late?

“Don’t worry about him.” Hye’s voice, so close beside him, made Marcy jump like a startled rabbit. He jerked his gaze to the werewolf in time to see Hye smile, closed-lipped this time. “He’s grumpy with everybody, so you never have to take it personal.”

Marcy tried his darndest not to wither on the spot. Yes, that was just so terribly reassuring, the resident vampire wasn’t just a vampire, he was a _grumpy_ vampire. A choice combination, that. Fantastic.

“Okay, come on, here’s your apron!” Hye had picked said article up from what Marcy could only assume had been the desk, and held it out between them for Marcy to take. “Work time.”  
Right. He was here for a job. He’d have to freak out about the vampire later.

Hye swept out of the office and Marcy followed, looping the apron on over his head and tying it in the back mid-stride. Immediately, he noticed how the vibrant teal clashed horrendously with the periwinkle of his tie and cringed hard enough that he had to pause in the doorway. He glanced back, then ahead at Hye’s shoulders, which were getting further away each second. Marcy would lose his social shield soon if he didn’t catch up, but…

Almost frantically, he wrangled the ugly polka-dotted fashion crime off his neck, folded it up accordian-style and doubled back to set it gingerly onto one of the chairs in front of Sam’s desk. He’d come back for it later and explain if anyone asked.

Hye wasn’t in the hallway anymore when Marcy exited for the second time, which made Marcy’s throat swell with a tide of anxiety. He swallowed it down, focused on putting one foot ahead of the other in order to creep back into the ruckus that was the shop atmosphere. After marinading in the quiet of the back office, the noise seemed even louder by comparison.

There seemed to be even more people seated in the booths and at the tables now; more must’ve come in in the short time they’d been in the back. The nearest sound however was the _crunch_ and _ping ping ping_ from the pinball machine, and the goads and cheers from the kids that somehow still hadn’t gotten bored. Marcy peeked around the corner to find them all still there—or at least, he was fairly certain it was all of them, from the brief moment he’d observed them.

All of them, plus Hye, who stood at the head of the console, the player currently responsible for all the alarm bells coming from the game.

The werewolf looked entirely enthralled, knees bent, lip pinched between wolfish teeth, dark eyes focused and reflecting all the colorful lights that flashed with each point. He gave the flippers a good loud punch, a chorus cluster of dings sounded off, and the gaggle of teens whooped, all but one. Jeff just groaned in disappointment.

“Ha!” Hye crowed, grinning now. “Eat my neon dust, Jeffery!”

“Oh, shut up,” Jeff grumbled, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his red and yellow windbreaker. “I’ll just beat you again.”

“Not if I hit,” Hye paused for dramatic effect, pumped the flippers again, and succeeded in yet another stream of rapid-fire points, “five thousand!” As he trumpeted the score out, the lights along the edges of the console and backbox started flashing, the sign of some sort of milestone, and the kids fell into an uproar. Hye stepped back from the game, apparently satisfied with his current score. Marcy was fairly certain he saw a few zinnos exchange hands.

Were these kids _betting_ on a _pinball game_?

Still, five thousand _was_ a decent score. Marcy had only managed to get that high once, using the best pinball unit at the arcade just across Shirley Drive from here, in the strip mall. He wasn’t sure if he still held the high score there… Maybe he could try to beat that score here.

Then he spotted a head of pink hair approaching behind Hye.

Sundance tapped the werewolf on the shoulder, gaining his attention. When Hye turned around, the elf’s eyes jumped straight to Marcy with a meaningful pointedness that prompted Marcy to instinctively stand up straighter. Wait, when had he slouched against the wall anyway? That was certainly not the impression he wanted to give on the first day.

“I can take over with Marcy if you need me to,” Sundance was saying, but Hye was already mid-headshake.

“Nah, I got it. I was just settling a score. The high score, to be exact.” Hye grinned, raising his chin and looking quite self-satisfied.

Sundance looked significantly less so. “Okay. Let’s try to stay on track then.”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” Hye offered a salute, which made Sundance crack a small smile before he went back to his business, heels clacking away.

Marcy released the sigh that had been hovering in the back of his throat. For a small person slathered in pink, that elf was intimidating…

“All right, kid.” Hye appeared next to him, making him jump yet again. This time, Marcy followed up with a moan and a subtle face palm; he really needed to calm down or he was going to look like a jittery fool. Though, it was probably too late for that at this point. The serious stare Hye fixed him with didn’t help matters. “You ready to learn what it takes to be a real waiter?”

“Uh,” Marcy wavered, “sure.”

“Sweet! Just follow me around then and I’ll fill you in as needed.” Hye set off toward the nearest occupied booth, and Marcy did just as he was told.

Thus began Marcy’s long afternoon of information absorbing. For the next two hours, he made himself Hye’s shadow. Following the werewolf around primarily entailed being enthusiastically introduced to every table they waited on and then trying his hardest not to shrivel up into a smoking pile of embarrassment on the checkered floor. In addition to knowing just how to make Marcy wanna find a corner to die in, Hye managed to snatch and remember each customer’s name before they left, which had Marcy questioning his life choices on multiple occasions. Other activities over the next hour or two included watching in awe as Hye put down orders in barely-legible shorthand, cleaning up after toddlers in three different booths, and trying his hardest not to mix up the caramel and butter pecan syrup behind the counter despite both bottles being labeled.

For the most part, he stuck with Hye the whole time. He could claim it was solely because that was the purpose of this training, but in reality, the werewolf was quickly becoming the person Marcy was most familiar with under this little shop roof. Which made him essentially a security blanket, and Marcy was not ashamed to admit that. To himself, at least. If somebody else asked, he might’ve worded it a bit differently… Nevertheless, Hye made relying on him to take charge incredibly easy, since he seemed to churn out conversation starters effortlessly. After two hours of observing that, Marcy found himself slightly envious of this skill.

Or at least, he would be, if he wasn’t currently busy watching one of Hye’s other more prominent skills in action, for the fifth time since they started. The metal ball did another round through the bumpers on the high end, nailed a drop target, and cleared fifty-two hundred points with a dozen flashes of light. Another high score scrolled across the DMD. The kids threw a fit, and Marcy found himself swept up in the excitement, cracking a grin and watching Hye step back with swelling confidence. The werewolf folded his arms, smirked, and watched the ball disappear down the drain.

“You’re pretty good,” Marcy spoke into the chaos, words barely audible even to his own ears. Despite himself, he eyed the lights along the backbox, which flashed in rhythm with the buzz coursing through his veins. Competition. He liked that. Maybe, if he was fast enough, he could duck in and give it a whack himself—

“Hey guys,” Sundance said, slipping into their midst so quietly, Marcy hadn’t even noticed his approach this time. Either he’d silenced his high-heeled steps or Marcy really wasn’t paying attention anymore. He’d noticed every other time the elf had intruded on their games.

Sunny had a strained smile plastered on his face, which made Marcy instantly nervous, as he snaked a hand around Hye’s arm. “Excuse us, I just gotta borrow him.”

Marcy got the feeling ‘borrow’ wasn’t the best word for it. Carefully, he inched his way out from the crowd of teens.

“…were training him?” Sundance was whispering, so Marcy hadn’t caught the first half. It was still hard to hear him over the murmur of the evening patronage, but he could make out the elf’s words if he listened closely. He sounded much more upset than he had last time. The smile had vanished, replaced by a furrow between his magenta eyebrows and hands outstretched in agitated question. “On task, Hye. This is his first day and you’re supposed to be teaching him. Setting an example.”

The last two times this had happened, Hye had bounced back with a ‘right, sorry’ and immediately lunged back to work. This time, under the renewed intensity of Sundance’s scrutiny, his ears tilted backward and his shoulders drooped. “Okay, yeah, I know. I’m sorry…”

In the midst of the busy eatery, Sundance pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, the sound of pure exasperation. Like Marcy’s mom every time she found his shoes or backpack in the middle of the foyer. Yeah, that seemed right; Sundance had some pretty impressive Mom energy.

“All right,” the elf said at last, resignation in every syllable, “all right, just… Man the counter. I’ll take care of things out here. Show the kid how to run the till.”

Ear’s twitching lower, Hye grumbled a rather pitiful ‘okay’ before turning to trudge off toward the counter, where the guy with purple hair—Dori—was giving the freckled white marble a wipe-down with a washrag. Marcy assumed he should follow, and did so at a small distance. He wasn’t sure what to do about the obvious waves of… chagrin? Regret? Unhappiness of some sort, it radiated off Hye’s slumped posture, oozed off him with every shuffled step.

Most people Marcy knew tried not to make it obvious when they were unhappy. But then, thus far, Hye kept proving he wasn’t like most people Marcy knew.

“Distracted again?” Dori said after Hye led them through the little door under the wedge of countertop. The guy, even taller up close—at least several centimeters taller than Marcy—tossed the rag onto one of the shelves tucked in the backside of the counter. He wore a red and white striped headband today.

Hye, who must’ve been about to say something first, snapped his mouth shut with a pout and nodded once. “Yeah…”

“Mm.” Dori’s blue eyes regarded Hye with some kind of cross between sternness and pity, before they flitted to Marcy’s face. Again, he found himself standing straighter under a foreign gaze, eager to make a semi-decent first impression. Then again, that hadn’t lasted long at all every time Hye’d paused to play, had it? What was his impression now then? A child who couldn’t resist playing with toys, probably. The thought made him want to slouch right back down again. Who was he kidding?

Dori smiled though, and it was strikingly different from the way Hye had smiled at him when he first came in. Dori’s smile, closed as it was, reached his eyes and made them squint. Just as warm and friendly as Hye’s had been, but without the exuberant energy. Much more Marcy’s speed, for sure.

When Dori raised a hand, Marcy’s first thought was ‘_oh no, handshake, quick, reach out, wait no, stop_.’ He was already halfway to meeting said handshake when he noticed Dori had lifted his hand up instead, palm forward, flat and waiting.

Oh. A high-five. Okay.

Marcy did his best to recover smoothly and gave the waiting hand—which was friggin’ huge compared to his, all long, knobby fingers—a halting pat. Not at all the enthusiastic swat he was sure Dori expected, but the guy didn’t seem to mind.

“Hey,” he said instead, his voice warm and calm, “I’m Dori.”

Marcy nodded. “Yeah, uh… hi.”

And that was it. Dori turned back to Hye, patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll give Sunny a hand, okay? We’re not super busy back here right now.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Hye countered, voice raised in warning despite the fact that his ears still hung low.

“I’ll be careful.” And then Dori was off, heading out onto the main floor and leaving the two of them alone behind the counter.

Marcy could instantly see why Dori would claim it wasn’t busy despite all the noise flying between the many patrons crowding the eating space. Compared to out there, this little corner of the shop was deserted. No one was up and moving around, making any moves toward the counter, and nobody occupied the barstools at the moment. Despite little more than a meter separating them from the nearest table, this pocket behind the counter felt almost like a different world.

Marcy decided he liked it.

Hye on the other hand appeared less than enthused. He sprawled forward across the counter, propping his elbow on the marble and his chin in his hand. His dark eyes roved the beyond, the outside, and did nothing to hide how much he’d rather be there than here. It was amazing, to be honest, just how obvious the werewolf was being. Marcy wasn’t the most socially observant person, he knew that; but even he could read this guy like an open book.

As he stepped just to Hye’s left, he thought maybe he should say something… or maybe he shouldn’t say anything. What _could_ he say? He was the outsider here. He had no idea how the dynamics worked in this place; maybe this was normal.

Still. Further to the left, on the corner of the counter, Marcy eyed the monolith that had to be the till, a massive, ancient thing that certainly added to the aesthetic of the place with its chrome plating, but with so many buttons on it, it seemed to loom over him despite being at chest-level. And Hye was supposed to teach him how to use that thing… The werewolf was making no moves towards it.

“So, uh…” left his mouth before he could stop it, the syllables clumsy over his lips and he mentally kicked himself for letting them go. He didn’t have a follow up! What was he supposed to say? Apologize? Remind him of work just like everybody else? “Are you…?”

_Are you what?? Just stop talking now before you make yourself more of a fool than you already have._ He’d already gotten just as distracted as Hye over that stupid game; he was liable to just make it worse if he kept talking without thinking.

“Yeah,” Hye said without any context whatsoever. What exactly did he think Marcy was about to ask? Marcy would like to know. “Yeah, I just… I don’t get what he’s so upset about.”

Marcy frowned. He followed Hye’s gaze, out over the main floor, but he couldn’t tell exactly what he was staring at. “You mean… Sundance?”

“It’s just a game,” Hye continued. “We’re an ice cream shop, not some kind of 5-star joint.”

Hadn’t Marcy thought the same thing as his mom wrestled him into that tie? He hummed in semi-agreement. And instantly regretted it, because this spat was certainly _not_ his to weigh in on.

“Besides.” Hye dropped his hand out from under his jaw, flopping it forward and craning his neck to stare up at the ceiling listlessly. “We could all die tomorrow. The world could end. Why does it matter if I stay on task or not?”

Whoa. For a brief second, Marcy’s brain attempted to swell large enough to encompass that concept, but he immediately bailed on that endeavor. He’d been thinking about ties, cash registers, video games and maybe a little about the homework he’d have to do once he got home. Not the frickin’ universe.

It wasn’t like Hye was wrong. When all was said and done, he had no idea what could happen tomorrow. The world _could_ end. He _could_ die. Ugh, how lame would that be… sure, he’d miss exams but he’d also never get to accomplish anything with his life. Then again, if everything was going to end anyways, would accomplishments really mean anything at all?

Oh boy, this was deep stuff. He wasn’t prepared.

“Um, I-I guess that’s… one way of looking at it,” he managed to sputter in response.

Hye didn’t seem to notice his distress. He just kept staring at the ceiling. “We should be focused on enjoying moments before they’re gone. I was just trying to have fun and make friends…” He sagged further into the counter and dropped his head to rest on his outstretched arms as if they were some sort of pillow. In doing so, he ended up facing toward Marcy, pout still in place.

Marcy found he couldn’t really do anything more than blink at him. He didn’t know what to do with this subject, so he didn’t even bother trying. All he could grasp was Hye was more perturbed over Sundance’s interjection than he’d let on. Maybe rightfully so, maybe not. But Marcy didn’t know what Hye expected him to do about it. Agree with him?

“You’re pretty quiet, you know?” was the next thing outta Hye’s mouth, and it made a flush tingle up Marcy’s neck, all the way to his ears.

Yes. He was aware of that particular character flaw. That was one impression he’d known he wouldn’t be able to avoid. He’d much rather people think him quiet than irresponsible, which… both were probably inevitable at this point. What if Sundance reported his behavior, and on his first day…

Then Hye sighed a heavy sigh, dragged himself off the counter, drummed his hands across the top before dropping them to his sides. “Sorry… You’re not in trouble or anything. It’s my fault anyways, so you don’t have to worry about Sam being mad or whatever.”

Mad about… Oh. How had Hye known Marcy was even considering… What? He hadn’t said anything that could possibly indicate his train of thought, his concern over the kind of employee they thought he was. How even—

Hye smiled at him again, the same bright, toothy thing, so broad it squinted his eyes shut. “For what it’s worth, I like you already. It’s gonna be fun to have you around.”

Fun…?

Marcy wasn’t sure what he’d done to merit being called ‘fun’ but. He’d take it.

“Um… thanks?” He wrung his hands a little. “Same? I mean… um…”

Heck, he didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. So he snapped his mouth shut before he could make things any more awkward than they already were. Better not to test the fragility of that ‘fun’ first impression.

He meant it, though. Hye had definitely established himself as… _something_ today. Maybe not a mentor like Sundance might’ve hoped, but certainly somebody easy to be around. While Marcy filed Sundance neatly away in a mental folder labeled ‘Strict: Do Not Test’, Hye had settled himself into something infinitely more personable. It was… kinda nice.

It was a day for first impressions, it seemed. What else had Marcy expected?

“Oh, right,” Hye said, “the till. Here, let me show you how to run it.”

Marcy nodded once, but for once, didn’t feel compelled to say a word.


	3. better late than ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why does it seem like when your day starts off with missing your alarm, everything after that seems to go horribly wrong?

* * *

The moment Marcy had opened his eyes at 8:15 A.M. Saturday morning, he blinked at the bleary face of his digital clock until the red halo around the numbers faded into clarity. The morning sunlight peeked through his grey curtains, glowed over his red walls, but didn’t reach the shadows gathered over his bed and that was just fine with him. Closing his eyes again, he indulged in a sleepy sigh and rolled right back over, turning his back to the clock. It was Saturday. Good ol’ Saturday. The actual Day of Rest. School a distant memory, homework could wait until tomorrow evening, Saturday was the day of the week that he could laze away to his heart’s desire. No classes to rush to, no obligations to meet, no patrons to satisfy—

Wait.

No.

Not good ol’ Saturday.

Not no obligations.

He had a job.

Which started at 8:00.

“Shhh**!”

He launched himself off the mattress in one great, impressive leap, his blanket tossed aside in a heap in his wake, and before his feet even hit the short fibers of his area rug, his hands groped for the hem of his nightshirt and began the arduous task of wrestling it up over his head at the same time he tried to remove his pants using only his toes, which granted was a long shot.

What had happened?? He’d set his alarm the night before, he wasn’t stupid. It was his first weekend with this new job, he wasn’t used to early Saturday mornings so he’d tried to do the normal thing, take the proper precautions. Stupid clock! Must be busted, and now he was fifteen minutes late and counting. It’d take him twelve minutes at least to get to the shop; he could just imagine the amount of scolding he’d get from Sundance.

Maybe he could make it in eight if he booked it. _Really_ booked it.

Rummaging through his chaotic dresser drawers like a burglar looking for loot, he grabbed the nearest decent thing his fingers could latch onto and threw the clothes on with reckless abandon, not even bothering to make sure his shirt buttons were straight or if the clothes were even clean, and tumbled across the room to his shoes before he’d even buttoned his jeans. With a scoop of each foot and a quick zip, he was decent enough to tear out his bedroom door and gallop down the hall toward the living room, and the front door.

He caught a fleeting glimpse of his mother in the kitchen before he left the view behind, stopping just long enough to snatch his backpack up from its place where Mom had moved it last night—just under the coat rack.

“Marcy??” his mom was calling as he yanked open the front door. “Something wrong?”

“Late!” he yelled, and that was all he took the time to give her before he was racing across the front lawn to where his bike lay right where he left it yesterday, in the middle of the grass, where Dad had told him not to leave it. But he didn’t have time to think about that now. Swinging his bag over his shoulders and his bike to its wheels, he jumped on and took off in one fluid motion, using the incline of the driveway to his advantage and pedaling hard to pick up some instant speed.

For a small town on a weekend, the roads were fairly busy this morning. Busier than Marcy would’ve hoped, busy enough to mean shortcuts that deviated from the bike paths probably weren’t a safe option. So he took the next best thing.

The sidewalks.

His dad would be furious, since it was technically illegal, but nobody ever got arrested for biking on sidewalks, and this was Bushfort. The roads may have been busy, but the sidewalks were always, always mostly deserted. Everybody drove everywhere. The only people who walked around on these streets were the occasional dog walker or elderly pair out for a stroll, both of which he could easily navigate around should he come across them. Minor offenses be darned, nobody would get hurt and he was so late as it was, if he had to explain himself to his parents later, they’d (sorta) understand. Better than facing the wrath of a certain pink elf who was sure to have words with him once he showed up twenty minutes late.

Thank everything, the sidewalks were completely empty today. Whether it was the time of day (maybe it was always like this Saturday mornings; he wouldn’t know, considering he always slept in) or just an odd coincidence, he wasn’t complaining. He’d take what he could get. He wove around waste bins and caged trees, the odd purple fire hydrant at the corner of 5th and Main, where he whipped through an admittedly risky hairpin in an attempt to make the left turn as quickly as possible, which led to him nearly bowling over some guy with a sign on the other side. Not bothering to stop, Marcy called an apology over his shoulder and pedaled harder to make up for the momentum he’d lost.

Halfway to the intersection at 2nd street, he realized the light ahead was red and some moron had stopped too far over the crosswalk, cutting off Marcy’s way forward. With a grumble that his mom would’ve taken issue with, Marcy ramped off the curb between two parked cars, glanced down the block to his right just long enough to make sure he wouldn’t get run over, and continued to the right side of the road at the same harried pace. To save on time and distance, he crossed diagonally. He couldn’t brake, he didn’t have the time. If he kept this up, he’d definitely cut the trip down to eight minutes, at least. The front tire hit the curb at an angle, his aim to jump it and ease across the other crosswalk just three meters to his left.

Instead, the bike skidded. With a lurch of his stomach, he felt the seat drop out from under him, his leg catching on the chassis to drag it with him while his momentum sent him careening across the concrete. The weight of the bike dragged them both to a halt, he came down on his knee, his elbow, and skidded to a painful stop just before his head hit the side of the bank building.

For one very long second, he lay there, staring at the sky and where the second floor of the bank reached to try and meet it. A single little cloud puffed its way across the blue emptiness. Marcy’s arm and leg stung like nobody’s business.

Was anything broken? He couldn’t tell. He’d have to check, but when he moved, his entire body said ‘can we not?’ in the form of one big ache from head to toe. That was nothing though; he’d been in football since middle school, he knew what was just the general shock of a sudden stop versus something more serious. When he put weight on the arm he’d landed on and all he got in turn was a slight increase in the sting across his skin, he knew he was fine. He carefully raised himself to his hands and knees, and his leg seemed to be in the same state—just road rash, no broken bones.

He flopped onto his butt so he could untangle the bike from his legs, and noticed a rip in both the sleeve of his white button-up and the knee of his jeans. Blood was gathering along the edges of both.

Ah. A little more than road rash, then. Dang.

So much for making it in eight minutes.

His bike was, miracle of miracles, unscathed. He gathered it and himself up and took a block to walk the rattle out of his bones and then, sucking up the sting of his wounds, cycled the rest of the way to the shop, which took him a good five minutes. If he had to guess, thanks to that little wipe out, the trip ended up taking him _longer_ than it would’ve on a normal day. By the time he coasted up to the bike rack outside Hambleton’s, he was a full thirty-five minutes late to work. Fan-flippin’-tastic.

After locking his bike in place with the chain he frantically fished out of his backpack, he jogged around to the back of the shop. Had his clock actually worked the way it was supposed to and he’d been on time, he would’ve been able to come in the front door before the shop was even open, but at this time of day, the lights were on inside and a few cars were parked in the lot outside. It was a possibility they were here for one of the other mall buildings, but with his leg and elbow looking like they did, he wasn’t about to risk it. He didn’t want to make a fuss.

Sam had told him on his first day that during business hours, the back door was always unlocked but that only the employees and their regular delivery people knew this. Sure enough, when Marcy gave the handle a twist, it turned smoothly and easily and he yanked the weighty portal open to slip inside as quietly as possible. When he latched it behind him, it closed him into the kitchen with barely a whisper of rubber lining kissing metal doorframe. Safe.

Or, mostly. He was in the kitchen now. _His_ domain.

Ji Newtcast, the vampire.

When Marcy glanced across the kitchen to the sink on the opposite side, the vampire was indeed there and to his chagrin, he wasn’t doing dishes, so his back wasn’t turned to the door. Instead, Ji leaned idly against the counter just to the left of the sink, nursing a mug in his pale, long-nailed hands. The vampire stared at him over the rim mid-sip, frozen it seemed in response to Marcy’s rather sudden appearance. Marcy tried his best not to gulp, particularly when one of Ji’s dark eyebrows arched upward in silent question.

Then Marcy remembered the fact that he was bleeding, and his stomach flipped. As quickly as he could manage, he gave Ji a simple nod of acknowledgment and made a beeline around the island counters toward the doors that would take him to the till, which he decided then and there was a much safer space than the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking, coming in the back way, knowing Ji would be back there. So some patrons might see a little blood. They’d live. Who knew what the sight did to a vampire who, for all Marcy knew, hadn’t even had breakfast yet?

Immediately on the other side of the kitchen doors, he almost collided with Sundance, who lit up with something like surprise. The elf opened his mouth, poised to ask something, at the same time Marcy opened his own to explain himself, only for Sundance to suddenly frown and grip Marcy’s arm. He gave a little tug, twisting Marcy’s arm just enough to see his elbow.

“What on earth happened to you?” Sundance asked, voice gentler than Marcy had expected. There was more concern there than exasperation. A week was all Marcy needed to be able tell that Sundance was fairly no nonsense and focused on his work ethic (a typical elf trait, Marcy assumed) so he’d thought for sure he would get an earful. After all, with how late he was, he’d had to wonder if he might even be in danger of being fired or something. He wasn’t sure how that worked here.

But Sundance’s pink eyebrows were drawn together in the middle and his black eyes weren’t rolling or squinting. Just wide and worried.

Marcy cleared his throat, glanced at his own arm, and shrugged a little. “Hit a curb weird and wiped out is all. No harm done.”

That frown deepened. “No harm done? You’re bleeding all over the place. That looks—and you’re leg too!” A sliver of exasperation seemed to sneak through for just a moment, but was quickly drowned out by even more intense worry that all but oozed out of every one of the elf’s stupidly invisible pores. Sundance gripped Marcy’s arms and turned him so he faced the little door that led out from behind the till. “Okay, come on. Let’s sit down.”

Marcy was instantaneously reminded of his mother and knew better than resist. He allowed himself to be marched out from behind the counter, where he realized the rest of the building appeared to be empty. No patrons. No children asking for samples. No high school girls who couldn’t decide what to order. Dori and Hye were nowhere to be seen. He was thirty minutes late, but if he didn’t know better, he’d begin to wonder if it even mattered. No one had mentioned that Saturday mornings were slow. Was it a holiday or something and he’d completely flaked on it?

“Right here,” Sundance said and all but pushed him into the seat at one of the booths. Before Marcy even got the chance to settle in, the elf began rolling up his ruined sleeve, careful not to bump the tender spot on his elbow. Marcy himself hadn’t even taken a good look at it since he kissed the pavement; it ached a little, but it was fine. He’d had worse.

When Sundance finally exposed the scrape to open air, he hissed through his dainty elven teeth, which made Marcy instinctively take a look at what had garnered that reaction. Up the outer side of his forearm, angry red road rash drew fine pink lines up his skin, but that was nothing compared to the mess he’d made of his elbow. Road rash turned to raw flesh right around his joint, and a good amount of blood was still pooling along the top and dripping whichever way gravity dictated.

It wasn’t that bad.

“Okay,” Sundance sighed, ogling the scrape with open concern, the way he held and tilted Marcy’s arm this way and that with an air of confidence reminding Marcy of his family’s doctor—with the addition of manicured nails, of course. It was one of the weirdest thoughts he’d had in a while. “You stay put. I’m going to go get some stuff to clean this up.”

Glancing toward the front door, Marcy swallowed. “What about—”

“Nobody’s come in all morning, and they probably won’t for another half hour or so. Stay put.” Sundance pointed to his bloodied knee. “Put that foot up, maybe. I’ll be right back.”

Before Marcy could argue, the elf was off, clacking away on a different pair of heels (he seemed to wear something entirely different every day, which boggled Marcy’s mind) and disappearing down the hallway that led toward the office. There wasn’t a high chance that the stuff he needed was in Sam’s office, so he was probably on his way to the stairway that Hye had told Marcy about two days ago. Hye claimed it led to the flat on the second floor, where he said they lived, all six of them. Somehow, they made it work apparently. Marcy had no idea how, considering the vast range of races and personalities that meant were cramped into such a small living space. Weren’t werewolves dangerous to elves or something? And what about Ji? How did they handle his… special needs?

That train of thought aside, Marcy glanced at his elbow again and huffed. It was stinging a little more now that Sundance had rolled up his sleeve, and the cooling blood kept tickling. Ah, and there was still his knee… Since he had nothing better to do, he took a moment to roll his jeans up so he could get a good look at that scrape too, which turned out to be something of a bad idea. The ankles of his jeans were almost too narrow for his knees, which meant the rough fabric kept bumping against the raw skin underneath. His mouth was a little dry by the time he got the pant leg out of the way, which was somehow embarrassing despite the fact that there was no one around to see. He really had had much worse! He’d broken his wrist in elementary school and his shin in middle school; he could sneeze at these scrapes, no problem. But now that he was looking at them, the wounds seemed to burn more intensely, which was completely ridiculous.

“Come on, you big baby, suck it up,” he murmured to himself while he gingerly raised his foot to the bench on the other side of the booth so he could elevate his knee, maybe stop the bleeding. He felt like an idiot.

If only his dumb clock had worked…

Though, perhaps if he hadn’t raced across town like maniac, that might’ve helped too.

Shadows fell across the blocks of morning light that streamed across the floor from the big windows, making Marcy whip his attention around toward them. If there were customers on their way to the door— Ah, no, it was just Dori and Hye, both coming around from the back. Hye wore rubber gloves on his hands as he gestured wildly along with whatever he was rambling about today and Dori, attentive as he always seemed to be, carried a squeegee like a battle axe. Had they been cleaning windows?

They made their way around to the front door and pushed inside, and Hye’s voice became suddenly clear and _loud_. “—be the perfect way to store food and stuff, right? It’d last for eons and eons so that if this planet ever blew up or something, nobody would have to start over from nothing.”

“That’s definitely an idea,” said Dori. “Might take a while for science to get there though.”

“We figured out the rabbit holes.” Hye beamed with confidence. “Black holes are just the next step!”

Before Marcy could figure out the best way to announce his presence amidst this thrilling conversation that he was certain he didn’t want to ask about, Dori’s light blue eyes settled on him first and the guy’s quiet smile widened a little. “Heya Marcy. What’s up?”

“Uhh—” Marcy wasn’t sure if he should mention what exactly he was doing, or play it cool.

Turned out he didn’t have to worry, because Hye noticed him next, smiled bright, then took one sniff and the smile disintegrated into instant concern. “Hey, is that blood?”

“Uhh—”

“Whoa, is it?” Dori stepped closer, and now that he was closer and Marcy could see him head to toe, he spotted the bucket in Dori’s other hand. So they were washing windows. Probably. Could’ve been a car, though, he supposed… “Are you okay?”

“I’m, uh, yeah.” Marcy fidgeted a little in his seat. Was he sitting casually enough? He didn’t want to look uncomfortable or anything; he was fine, and he hoped they could tell. “I’m okay. Just scraped myself up a little.”

Hye came scampering over to his booth in a flash, leaning his gloved hands onto the table and looking him over with a frown and a pouty lip. “What happened?”

“I kinda wiped out on my bike on the way here this morning…”

The werewolf’s eyes grew wide. “Really?? How’d you do that?”

Feeling a bit of heat creeping up the back of his neck at the level of focused attention he was getting, Marcy averted his eyes to stare at his arm instead. It was easier to focus on than that unwavering look Hye was giving him, or the focused worry on Dori’s face. “Uh, I… missed my alarm. So… I was late. And in a rush. Guess I shoulda been more careful.”

“I’ll say,” came Sundance’s voice, drawing all their attention toward the mouth of the hallway, where the elf approached with an armful of things. Marcy spotted a small towel and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Oh joy. “At the very least, you should’ve been wearing elbow and knee pads and a helmet. Honestly, you should really be wearing those things even on normal days!”

Hye stepped aside to give Sundance space to set his load across the table, giving Marcy a better look at what he was in for: scissors, a roll of gauze, a water bottle, band-aids, a can of some kind, the towel (actually multiple towels) and peroxide, and a little baggie of metal clips. Probably for the gauze. Gosh, this guy had come prepared. Should’ve expected that. Elf and all. That peroxide wasn’t going to be pleasant, he knew that from experience. At least he didn’t see any needle and thread anywhere. That, he might’ve taken issue with. The scrapes weren’t _that_ bad.

“Okay,” Sundance said, unfurling some of the towels and laying them out. “Arm first, then we’ll look at your knee.”

Marcy eyed him, then Hye and Dori, a sinking feeling of shame bringing more heat to his face. Bad enough he was getting this treatment from Sundance—who was reminding him more and more of his mother every time she thought Marcy had hurt himself—but Hye and Dori were here to watch.

“M’kay…” Marcy twisted carefully in the booth, swinging his leg out of its elevated position so he could face the outside edge again, lean his arm close to Sundance’s hodge podge med kit. “I already rolled up my jeans, so…”

Sundance took one glance at his exposed knee and frowned instantly. “Ah! That looks even worse, what… Marcy,” the elf sighed, with such Mom energy it managed to be simultaneously amusing and slightly annoying. “Why didn’t you wear any protection??”

Marcy tried to ignore the slight bristle he felt creeping up on him, foregoing the pout he wanted to implement in favor of just staring off to the side at nothing in particular. “I dunno… I just don’t, usually.”

“Well, you might consider it.” With that, Sundance snatched up one of his towels, wet it with the water from the bottle, and then gathered the peroxide and got to work. Just as he said, he started with Marcy’s arm, told him in advance that it was going to sting, like Marcy didn’t already know, and then proceeded to douse the scrape in a splash of the wicked antiseptic. Marcy winced at the sizzle and the sting, which eased somewhat when one of the towels pressed over it, Sundance’s hold firm but steady. After a second or two, he withdrew the towel again, spotted red, and began dabbing away at the area. Hye tried hovering closer over the elf’s shoulder to watch, and was quickly nudged back.

Marcy didn’t like this_ at all_. They were all just watching in silence. Hye, he could be introverted around. Hye usually filled the silence, but he seemed uncharacteristically quiet as he watched Sundance work. Dori, too. Over the past week, Marcy had figured out that Dori was a pretty quiet person himself, but he was also laid back enough that he didn’t usually scrutinize Marcy enough to make it awkward. This was different. He didn’t like the way they were all looking at him, like some kind of poor kid who fell off his bike.

_Well, that is kinda what happened._

That was beside the point. He wasn’t a child. All this concern radiating from them was unnecessary.

A hiss of pain escaped him as the scrape on his knee flared. In his depth of thought, he must’ve missed Sundance moving on from his arm to kneel at his feet. The sudden assault of peroxide and the compress caught him off guard.

Hye frowned and fussed over Sundance without actually touching him. “Hey, careful!”

“I _am_,” Sundance claimed. “Hye, do you have some clothes he could borrow? These are ruined.”

Ruined? Marcy, glad of the distraction from the slowly-easing burn at his knee, looked between the rolled up jeans’ leg and the ripped elbow of his shirt, both still spotted with blood that was slowly drying from its vibrant red color. That wasn’t ruined. Blood washed out of stuff. White stuff was harder, sure, but all he needed was a little bleach or something and it’d be good as new, right? Then his mom could stitch ‘em right up like the fabric wizard she was. Ruined? That seemed a bit extreme.

Hye didn’t seem to agree, because he looked like something had just dawned on him after Sundance’s question. “Oh! Right, yeah, sure, I can go find something.”

“You look about the same size, so just bring something down. Something_ simple_,” Sundance clarified as an afterthought. “Please.”

“You got it!” Hye pointed at Marcy, which made the latter straighten his shoulders at the sudden attention. “Don’t worry Marcy, we gotcha covered!”

And then off the werewolf scampered, vanishing down the hall. With his space cleared, Dori took the opportunity to saunter a little closer. Thank everything, his face had relaxed a little and most of the concern was gone, replaced by casual interest.

“Your bike okay?” Dori asked, leaning his bucket arm on the booth across from where Marcy sat.

Marcy nodded. “Yeah, yeah, bike’s… bike’s good. I’m the only one who got a little banged up.”

Sundance tsked and shook his head as he dabbed away the blood around his knee, and the streaks of red that had trickled all the way down to his ankle. “You should be more careful. You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse.”

Marcy swallowed a little, scratched his good hand through his hair absently, and tried to counter quietly. “Eh. I’ve seen worse. This is nothing, really.”

“That doesn’t excuse recklessness,” Sundance returned with calm finality that made Marcy bristle, just a little. He immediately felt horrible for it; these people, Sundance in particular, were going completely out of their way, putting their whole morning on hold to help patch him up after he’d made a dumb mistake. It was his own fault, yeah, and if it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have made such a big fuss about everything, but still. “They make safety equipment for a reason. What if you’d hit your head?”

Marcy sunk a little in his seat, not liking where this was going but nowhere near confident enough to try and argue. “You sound like my mother, geez…”

An awkward beat of silence after that made Marcy wish for the umpth time that his clock had just worked like it was supposed to this morning. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. He’d be happily wiping down tables, doing an early sweep of the room, making sure everything looked as snazzy as it could. Or at least, that’s what he assumed he’d be doing… What else did they do when there was nobody here?

Fingers on his arm made him jump, only for him to realize it was (still) Sundance, picking up his elbow to look at it again. Then Sundance grabbed the little can he’d brought and held it out for Marcy to see.

“This is some antibio paste,” he said, tapping the label with one of his long nails. Marcy glanced at the label, processed the pink and yellow color scheme but didn’t really read the words. “Put some on both scrapes, then I’ll wrap them up.”

After all that, _now_ the elf was letting him take care of himself? Why couldn’t he have just done that in the first place? Only then, it then occurred to Marcy that he really ought to be grateful Sundance was letting him take this part. If he didn’t, that would’ve meant Sundance would be rubbing this who-knew-what over his arm and leg himself and goodness, if that didn’t sound like the most awkward thing Marcy would’ve ever experienced. The day he lost his front teeth and that one time at summer camp two years ago included. He’d never live that down. Just thinking about it made heat rush from his neck to his forehead. Without further ado, he snatched the can from Sundance’s hand and twisted the cap off.

He peered at the yellowish paste inside for a moment, gave it a whiff—it smelled like flowers and lemons—and carefully dabbed his fingers inside. It had the consistency of butter-cream frosting, but looked more like hair gel.

While he was in the middle of gingerly swiping the strange substance over his (mild) injuries, Hye came bounding back in with an armful of clothes, his usual energy levels back to normal if the way he bounced from one foot to the other was any indication. The werewolf grinned wide and leapt to a stop in front of Marcy.

“I found some super cute stuff, I think you’re gonna look _great_!” Hye giggled, jittering with raw excitement.

Sundance sighed from where he leaned against the table, still waiting for Marcy to finish with the pasty stuff. “I said simple, Hye. This isn’t a makeover.”

The werewolf jutted out his lower lip. “Why not?” Then he puffed out his chest and spoke out to the middle distance. “The opportunity for a makeover should never go unseized! Carpe diem!”

While Dori sniggered, Sundance just rolled his eyes. Marcy finished with the paste in the same moment and, not sure how to interject smoothly, just made sure to set the can on the table loud enough to be heard. Sure enough, Sundance turned back to him at the sound, and nodded upon taking in the can with the lid back in place. Now that that was out of the way, Marcy was almost finished with this bout of humiliation. Just a little while longer, and he was home free. He glanced toward the door, certain that at any moment, somebody was gonna come waltzing in and he’d just want to dissolve into the bench.

While the elf applied the patch band-aids he’d brought and carefully swathed Marcy’s elbow and knee in gauze, Hye leaned in close and cooed. “Aw, you’re like the troop mom, Sunny!”  
Sundance’s hands faltered just a little bit, and his delicate face scrunched with something between chagrin and embarrassment. He kept his attention fixated on his work, but Marcy swore he could see the faintest hint of color brightening his face, accentuated by the hue of his hair. “Why do you guys keep saying that… I’m not, I just. Somebody’s gotta make sure you guys are taken care of.”

Marcy pursed his lips. That was definitely a Mom sentiment, so it didn’t exactly refute Hye’s claim. Besides that, even if Marcy wasn’t including himself based on an age technicality, everybody else here was an adult, right? _Come on, man, we can take care of ourselves._

Hye seemed to agree with at least half of this train of thought. He offered Sundance a cheeky smile. “Moms do that.”

Sundance ducked his head, reddening further. “Anybody can do this. No one has a monopoly on patching up scrapes.”

“Like moms do with their children.”

Marcy frowned at that. _I’m not a child._

Sundance frowned too. “I’m not a mom!”

_Oh, wait…_ Okay, maybe Marcy needed to chill out a little. Maybe he wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with this whole thing. Sundance didn’t seem like the awkward type, though today or any day. He was always so ‘pay attention’ and ‘no goofing off’ and had no problem putting his foot down. Was that thanks to his career (because Marcy had definitely looked him up this week and confirmed that, yes, Sundance had been on the cover of several beauty and fashion magazines) or was it just how elves were? Marcy hadn’t thought that elves were even capable of being awkward, which looking back… well, if there were signs of the contrary, he’d entirely missed them. Just skimmed right past them, too embarrassed and ready for the whole thing to be over with.

Kinda like what got him into this mess in the first place. Moving way too fast.

“Can we just,” Sundance muttered, head down while he finished the wrap around his knee and clipped it in place, “drop this, please? I’m almost finished.”

With a blush on his face and the way he was avoiding eye contact with Hye, Sundance looked… kinda small. Of course, he _was_ small, that was why he wore heels all the time, but this was a different kind of small. Like an invisible kind, one that made him seem like he wanted to just… disappear. Something Marcy understood all too well.

_Oh hello, empathy. Good to see you._

Marcy swallowed down a gulp of sheepish guilt and tried his best to avoid matching Sundance’s expression. The last thing either of them needed was for Hye or Dori to notice they were _both_ embarrassed and red and then get any sort of dumb ideas. On top of that, to convince them otherwise, he’d have to explain himself—and how he’d slapped the ‘Mom’ label on Sundance too, while getting all up in arms over how they were treating_ him_. Like he was something he didn’t want to be.

Childish.

“Hey, we have some customers coming,” Dori suddenly announced, driving a stake through the awkward silence and snapping it like a rubber band.

Marcy couldn’t see them from where he was sitting, but if Dori was staring at them over his shoulders like it looked, they were approaching just out the front door. Marcy’s gaze flitted from Dori to the door to the blood-stained rip in his shirt sleeve. Yeah, he was gonna need to change at superhero speed now, wasn’t he?

Sundance stood and started gathering up his impromptu medical supplies. “Go get changed, Marcy. You should be good to go. Come to the kitchen when you’re done, and we’ll set you up with some stuff you can do without moving too much.” Then the elf offered him a smile—that same one he’d given him the first day, practically perfect. Practiced, plastic almost. It didn’t reach his eyes. A model smile. Sundance gathered up the remainder of his things and strode off.

In his place, Hye appeared and shoved his armful of clothes into Marcy’s lap. Marcy barely had time to wrap his hands around it before the werewolf pulled him to his feet and gave him a gentle push in the same direction. “Tell me if they don’t fit, though I’m pretty sure they will!”

Marcy could spot the customers just reaching the door now, so he had no room or time to object. He limped his way down the back hall, toward the restrooms waiting at the end, just before the door to the stairway. He spotted Sundance disappearing up the stairs at the back. Then he pushed his way into the men’s room and prepared himself to face whatever fate Hye had decided for him.

All things considered, it wasn’t that bad. Marcy didn’t care much about clothes to begin with, not nearly as much as his mother would probably prefer, so he didn’t mind the smiling cat face on the front of the light blue sweatshirt. The black jeans were a little more snug than he usually wore them, but they did the job. Hye maybe didn’t think through the fact that skinnies could potentially cause discomfort on his newly-wrapped knee, but. That was neither here nor there. Marcy wasn’t about to complain. This was generous enough, and he could handle a little discomfort. His brain would adjust, right? That’s how pain worked.

Once he was changed, he stuffed his ruined clothes in the big trash bin under the restroom sink. He didn’t need them patched. In fact, if he could avoid his mom finding out about this whole fiasco, that’d be fantastic. She might ask about his new set of clothes… He could just. Bend the truth a little, just like he did Wednesday when she asked about his co-workers and he did his best to skim over any details about the one employee who didn’t seem capable of looking at Marcy without glaring. He wouldn’t be lying; he’d just say that he spilled something on himself and needed a change and Hye was kind enough to loan him something. Yeah… that could work.

He swallowed the swell of guilt in his throat and headed out to the kitchen.

Dori and Hye were handling the customers, a group of four adults, when he stole behind the counter and slipped unnoticed into the kitchen. He thought maybe he’d find Sundance waiting, maybe even Sam, since he hadn’t seen the man all morning. But no. There was still only one singular person back here. The same person as always.

Ji glanced up from where he stood, wiping down a dozen little crystal cups with a towelette, and those silver eyes almost glowed at Marcy from under the ridge of his pale brow. Marcy could see the pupils, narrowed into slits, and had to wonder how he hadn’t noticed that the first time they laid eyes on each other.

He crept further into the kitchen, hovered at the corner of the counter along the wall. One of the two islands stood between the two of them; that was something. He reached subtly to press the silver pendant against his skin under his collar, but realized with a lurch of his stomach that the necklace was missing. How… No, he must’ve been in such a hurry this morning that he totally spaced on it. He’d left it behind… and now he was tucked in an empty kitchen with a vampire and a pair of fresh wounds.

Was there some kind of emergency precautions humans were supposed to take in situations like this?

“Sunny patch you up, there, kid?” The vampire’s monotonous voice wafted to him in a murmur, dulled further by the fact that he’d lowered his gaze back to the cups. He finished cleaning the inside of the last one and ran the towel along the lip before setting it aside.

Marcy, watching every move of those clawed hands, cleared his throat as un-awkwardly as he could possibly manage. “Uh… yeah. Yeah, I’m good now. Uh… it wasn’t that bad.”

“Lot of blood for ‘not that bad’,” Ji said without looking at him, making his stomach flip. “Bet Sunny freaked.”

That was enough to make Marcy drag his attention away from those hands—those claws—to squint. “I… I wouldn’t say that. He was actually kind of…” Marcy wanted to say ‘smothering’ but refrained and tried to pick a better term. “…Straightforward. Uh… focused.”

For some reason, Ji snickered at this, his lip curling. It made Marcy uneasy. He thought for sure he could glimpse one of the vampire’s fangs behind that lip.

The vampire didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. Freaked.”

Marcy let himself feel a little insulted for Sundance, and barely managed to stop the frown before it settled on his face. He didn’t want to pick any kind of fight with this guy; he might’ve wrecked his bike today, but he didn’t have a death wish. He remembered the recent news, how easily humans could break like twigs… Still. “I think he did okay… I mean, h-he didn’t have to. But…” He wasn’t sure what he was saying. But what? But he did anyway? But he could’ve been worse? Worse what? Ah, Marcy just needed to let that train of thought crash. He fidgeted, bouncing his fists off his thighs and biting the inside of his cheek.

“Is he… I mean…” What did he mean? Marcy wasn’t sure. He just wanted to fill the silence. Ji seemed to like looking down when he talked, and that was better than being stared down by those eyes of his. “I suppose being good at everything is just an elf thing, huh?”

When he glanced up again, Ji was not looking away like he’d hoped. Instead, Ji stared him right in the eye and then looked him over from head to toe, eyes squinted, focused. Marcy felt sweat break out along the back of his neck. His scrapes seemed to itch all of the sudden.

“Who told you that?” Ji leaned his palms on the edge of the island counter, claws ticking against the brushed metal.

Marcy averted his eyes. “I dunno… Nobody. Everybody says it.”

“Mm-hm…” Ji paused, tapping his claws more.

Before either of them could say anything more, the kitchen doors swung inward and nearly gave Marcy a heart attack. Speak of the devil, Sundance strode through, back straight, confident as ever. He spotted the two of them and the seriousness on his face relaxed for just a moment—long enough for Marcy to recognize relief and the barest hint of a smile, a real one that warmed his eyes for a fraction of a second—before the business came right back.

“Good, you’re both here,” the elf said, looking between them. “Marcy, I want you to help Ji back here today. Ji, don’t let him move around too much.”

At the same time a chill settled in Marcy’s stomach, Ji’s thin lips twisted up at one corner. The vampire nodded. “Sure. I’ll find something for him to do.”

Though outwardly he shrugged, Marcy found himself wondering how hard it would be to make himself start bleeding again. Then maybe Sundance would have to pull him out, redo the bandages, _something_. He’d take a bunch of helicopter co-workers over this any day. But then, if he did start bleeding again… he was stuck. In a back room. With a vampire. Who _ate_ blood for breakfast, literally.

The moment Sundance left them alone again, the air seemed to get twice as heavy. The itch was back, incessantly nibbling under Marcy’s new bandages, almost to say ‘hm maybe you should leave, we’re still bleeding here’. Could Ji tell? Could vampires smell every drop of blood, like in the movies? Did it make them… hungry? Suddenly, the awkward tension from the last ten minutes seemed like nothing at all; Marcy would gladly take it back. Meanwhile, Ji stared at him a few seconds more than felt entirely natural, pupils dilating a little, before he gestured toward the back of the kitchen with an open palm.

“Sam’s finished some baking this morning. Load is clean. Help me with these glasses and then we’ll put those pans away.”

Marcy nodded, a bit too emphatically. It earned him a dubious eyebrow raise from the vampire in front of him, but either Marcy covered it up quickly enough or Ji didn’t care enough to dwell on it. He didn’t say anything, not even when Marcy inched closer to the island only to discover he didn’t know where the rags were. Though he spun a full circle, he found the steel countertops bare, didn’t see any racks nearby or cupboards where they might be, and yet Ji hadn’t indicated any specific place he was supposed to find one. Were they supposed to share?

“Under,” came Ji’s gruff voice. Marcy whirled back around to face him. Ji, mid-buff again, tapped one of his claws against the counter. “Rags.”

“Oh…” Marcy ducked down, ignored the jolt of pain down his leg, and found a neatly folded stack of white kitchen towelettes next to a box of disposable cutlery and what looked like a giant jar of cherries. He didn’t spare a second in snatching one off the top and popping back up again.

He found Ji scowling in his direction. “Slow down. Jeez…”

“S-Sorry…”

“Never mind. Just start.”

He didn’t really entirely understand what they were doing, but he picked one of the cups anyway and, trying to watch Ji’s movements as inconspicuously as possible, started swirling the cloth over the glass inside and out. If he was quiet, he could avoid unnecessary attention. Maybe.

The silence drew out between them, longer and somehow colder than Marcy knew a silence could be. He watched the vampire’s hands, avoided his face; he mimicked the motions of those fingers and tried not to think about those claws, or about the story his dad had told last night—how his partner, Officer King, needed stitches on his neck and face after a vampire decided to resist arrest. All she’d needed was her bare hands…

But he wouldn’t have to worry about that here. He wasn’t threatening detainment, he was just cleaning dishes…

As one by one, the glasses were set aside sparkling, Ji said not a word. Now and then, Marcy glanced at his face, and came to regret it every time. Because every time he raised his eyes, they’d meet Ji’s—the vampire was watching him, closely, not even blinking from what Marcy could tell. Why, Marcy hadn’t the slightest; he was only doing as he was told. What more did Ji expect?

They finished off the glasses without Ji having said a single thing and, once again, Marcy had no clear instruction regarding the pans they were supposed to put away. The vampire offered nothing; Marcy hung back, watching and wondering. Ji took his time, folded his towelette and set it neatly on the corner of the countertop, and shuffled around toward the sink, a massive industrial thing three times the size of the sink in the kitchen at home. To the giant tub’s right sat an equally large strainer, where more than half a dozen casserole pans laid out to dry. Ji took two, moseyed back around the far side of the island counter—to Marcy’s relief; they weren’t in close quarters quite yet—and tucked the pans away in one of the tall, narrow cupboards along the wall.

Ji obviously wasn’t the mentoring type. That didn’t matter; Marcy didn’t need to be coddled. The demonstration was all he needed. He took a tentative first step with his bad leg, winced a little, and pushed on without hesitating too much. He took up two pans of his own, just as the kitchen doors swung inward.

Dori’s presence was welcome, but brief. He must’ve been filling some order; he came, said ‘good morning’ to Ji, nodded to Marcy, and went over to the ovens to fish something out of the warming racks. Marcy watched a moment, trying to see what was in there. It was a nice distraction.

Something sharp jabbed Marcy in the back, making him jump and nearly drop the pans he was holding. His knee stung in protest.

“Hurry, move,” said Ji, just behind him, so close Marcy swore he could feel his breath on his neck.

He didn’t need to be told twice. He practically shoved the pans into the cupboard, which seemed to be some sort of bakery storage, and hurried to squeeze his way past the vampire to fetch more. The kitchen felt ridiculously cramped all of the sudden; the air felt close, hot but chilly at the same time. But maybe that was just Marcy and the sweat that had broken out across his skin.

He did his best to avoid treading the same path as Ji, going back and forth from the strainer to the cupboard, but the oddest thing was… Ji kept following him. If Marcy took the long way around the island, Ji came up behind him. To think, he’d been so uncomfortable with how Dori and Hye and Sunny had hovered, but they had nothing on this. And odder still, if Marcy met him halfway, the vampire would simply stop in the middle of the narrow space. Not in such a way as to invite even an awkwardly close passing, but more like a rock, planted. Waiting. Marcy staring down at him, him staring Marcy down with those slitted pupils—Marcy was almost positive now that his eyes were glowing under the shadows of his heavy bangs—and simply wait for Marcy to step aside. And then the vampire would move along, not bothering to limit the space he took on the way, which meant Marcy had to make himself as small as possible to let him pass without being nudged out of the way.

For the life of him, Marcy couldn’t figure out what the problem was. He’d never had someone do something like this. His parents, Sibyl, Sundance and Hye, they seemed open with their qualms. They said something if they had a problem with it. Even Marcy himself… well, okay, no he didn’t do that. He was more of an emotional stew, because dishing out was a pain, but. That aside, this seemed wholly different and one-hundred times more stressful to deal with.

How was Marcy supposed to do better if he didn’t even understand what the problem was?

Moreso, maybe there wasn’t even a problem. Maybe this was just a vampire thing. In which case, Marcy really didn’t have a prayer.

By the time Sam came into the kitchen and tied on his apron, Marcy’s nerves had gone through the roof. He could’ve hugged the boss, in another universe where he maybe was more like Hye than himself, but as it was, he all but sagged against the island counter with relief. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes since Sunny abandoned him to this fate, but it felt like an hour.

The strange behavior from Ji stopped after that as well.

The staring didn’t though. That icy gaze kept catching Marcy’s attention from the corner of his eye, more than once startling him from his task—helping clean, organize, fetch things for Sam—or making him shiver. And he still couldn’t figure out what on earth the issue was. He hadn’t even said a word to the vampire since the glasses, and he did exactly as he was told. By all rights, there was nothing within reason Ji could be reacting to.

Was the vampire just… hungry?

Another chill shimmied down Marcy’s spine and he did his gosh-darnedest to hide it, while he counted out three sundae bowls and avoided looking in Ji’s general direction. Still, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end; he could feel Ji’s glare. And it was a glare he’d be stuck with now, for the rest of the day. His first Saturday, his first full day of work. There’d be no escape until 8 PM—later, if he had to stay to make up for coming in late.

If only his stupid clock had worked!


	4. seemingly so

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a weekend since his spectacular wipe out, and Marcy most definitely doesn't want to work with the vampire again. Imagine his relief when one of the other employees notices his hesitation and actually offers him an alternative.

* * *

Riding his bike to work the next time—Monday, the start of the second week of his trial period—proved to make it impossible for Marcy to entirely dismiss his wipeout as nothing at all. He still didn’t consider it anything major, but after a full Sunday morning in an oak pew, sitting and standing and kneeling and sitting again at regular intervals, he’d had a nice dose of humble pie and also renewed his appreciation for recliners. He had a stunning mural of black and blue across his arm and leg, even his hip, and his knee, stubborn to scab over, kept reopening. It bled through the service and stained his slacks, just like it had when he rode his bike home (in Hye’s clothes, which now that he thought about it, he completely forgot to bring back, whoops) from work after the accident. If it kept this up, he’d run out of pants. Marcy supposed he should’ve expected it, considering how much motion the knee went through and how little air it got being wrapped up mummy-style all the time.

So he’d decided to wear shorts today, in hopes that maybe it would help.

Too bad he hadn’t stopped to think similarly precautionary thoughts about avoiding his bike before he took it instead of the bus to school that morning. Now he was stuck with it and after a long day of constant up and down, his knee complained with every pump of the pedals. He’d avoided bleeding all day, but it was stinging up a storm and it was _not_ a good sign. He wasn’t even at work yet.

_Smart, kid. Real smart._ He supposed he could get off and walk, but he had yet to decide if he’d rather be in pain or late again. He couldn’t go his usual speed in this shape. And the ride from school to Hambleton’s was even longer than the ride from home; fifteen minutes at least, counting the time he had to spend going through six stoplights. Sundance wouldn’t be happy if he was late, but he’d be equally not happy if Marcy re-injured himself on the way there. It was a lose-lose.

And that wasn’t even the worst part. What if he showed up bleeding? What if Sundance made him work with Ji again…?

He shook his head a little, trying to shoo that idea away before coming to stop at the last light. Nah, he’d take it slow, and even if he was a little late, they’d understand right? He could wait tables just fine.

Immediately, he felt a little bad, but… a day of working just three feet away from the vampire had been quite enough for him, for a long while at least. Ji wasn’t terribly rude or disagreeable in any particular way. No, it was actually the opposite. Marcy would’ve taken disagreeable over the empty silence that had kept him gripped in anxiety for several hours at a time as they passed dishes between themselves, passed shoulder to shoulder on their way to put things away. Even when Sam had come into the kitchen to start baking, he’d spent the day on the opposite side of the room and there hadn’t been a lot of conversation. Just the occasional passing quip. A pat on Marcy’s shoulder. Nothing to settle the twist in his gut, nothing but hot suds, squeaky gloves and the odd sidelong glance Ji sent him every so often, those slitted pupils thin and intense behind ragged black hair.

The same anxiety crawled its way up his neck now at the prospect of being sentenced to another several hours of _that_.

No, he did _not_ want to deal with that again, whether he had his necklace this time or not.

Soon, the plaza and his destination loomed ahead of him. And he hoped against hope that the sharp, burning pain on his knee was just strain, and not new blood.

_I’m fine,_ he chanted to himself; _nothing to worry about._ He coasted into the parking lot, locked his bike in its usual place, and headed inside through the front.

He welcomed the din of business chaos this time, bell and all, surprising himself (though if he was comparing it to the stiff silence of the kitchen, it made perfect sense). It was crowded as ever, a dozen or so patrons having shown up to battle the Monday blues. Marcy spotted Hye right away at one of the back tables, beaming and giggling with a toddler seated in one of the company high chairs. Sundance stood at the counter, discussing something with Dori, who was wearing a red and white headband today. Sundance looked Marcy’s way as the door’s little jingle died away into the shop noise, and the elf raised a hand to wave in acknowledgment, then said something more aside to Dori, which Marcy couldn’t make out. Ah well, Marcy needed to talk to both of them before he went to fetch his apron anyway. He wanted, needed to confirm where exactly he’d be working today.

_Anything but dishes, anything but dishes._

“Hey Marcy,” Sundance greeted once he was close enough to hear. Dori echoed with a nod, which Marcy returned. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” tumbled from Marcy’s lips before he could gauge how it might sound. The word wavered halfway out his mouth. “Uh, yeah, I’m-I’m good. Had a good weekend… You?”

“Same. Pretty normal ‘round here,” Dori answered, while Sundance seemed like he wasn’t buying what Marcy was saying. The way he squinted made Marcy fidget, and when the elf looked him over and those pink-rimmed eyes stopped short over his knee, Marcy tried his best to remain calm and casual despite the sudden pit in his stomach.

“You’re bleeding,” was all Sundance said.

Marcy glanced down. Red had formed a stark little crimson spot in the middle of the crisp white bandage. He swallowed a sigh.

“Ah… right.” _Well, I’m doomed._

Sundance sighed, tapping his elf nails on the countertop. “I think we should put you with Ji again today, just to be safe.”

“NO, I—” Marcy snapped his mouth shut over the words that jumped from his throat, louder than he’d intended, much louder. That was unnecessary, and he felt it in the knot forming in his gut. Sundance and Dori both raised their eyebrows at him. He found his gaze drawn down toward his shoes. “I-I’m good, really. It barely hurts, and it’s only a little bit. I don’t…”

What was he even saying? What grounds did he have to make any sort of demand? He was the new kid, on a trial period for Pete’s sake, and Sundance was his supervisor. Dori, too. They probably thought he was just being a childish upstart. He didn’t have any right to object to anything they asked him to do, not when his only reasons for wanting not to do it were… petty, at best. So what if the vampire kept eyeing him funny? He’d more than survive, barring Ji having a very bad day. It wasn’t like he could do anything with Sam in the room anyways. Marcy could grin and bear the tense silence if he really had to.

All the same, if he _didn’t_ have to…

“I just thought…” Sundance kept his eyes on his own hand, and kept tapping his fingers. That’s when Marcy clued into the idea that maybe he’d gone and made the elf feel just as awkward as he did. Again. “If you move around less, that’s probably best. You need to let it heal.” His eyes sharpened a little, rising to meet Marcy’s, which just made Marcy fidget in place. “You’re already pushing it on that bike.”

“I’m…” Marcy began without thought, but didn’t have anywhere to take the sentence afterward. He’d already talked himself down. Sundance wasn’t leaving much room for argument either. A glance to Dori made it clear there’d be no back-up coming from that end; Dori just glanced between the two of them casually, lips tightly sealed, silent in the face of the quiet conflict before him. Sundance maintained his stare, pointed and heavy. Marcy had to wonder if they were already starting to catch onto what made him most likely to cave.

Silence and being the center of attention.

“Okay,” with a half-hearted shrug, Marcy conceded, dropping his gaze to the floor. He picked it back up right away, and tried looking Sundance in the eye, if only to try and make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. No harm done. He’d be fine. Behind Dori, the kitchen door loomed, just waiting to swallow him. “That’s fine. I’ve… I’ve just gotta get my apron real quick.”

He took a single step toward escaping them. He’d use the short time in the office to mentally prepare himself for the coming day. Then he’d face the vampire again. He tried very hard not to look toward that kitchen door.

Just as he was about to take the second step, Dori spoke up.

“You know,” he said, nonchalant as usual, seemingly oblivious to Marcy’s teeming discomfort, “he could work with me.”

With those five syllables, it was like the sun came up in Marcy’s chest. It crested over the anxiety, simmered it down in an instant, and dear God, please, he hoped the wave of pure relief wasn’t as obvious on his face as it was in his mind. He jerked his gaze to the man behind the counter, to find Dori observing him with a quiet stare and the most minute smile Marcy had ever seen, so slight it was barely there. Marcy clenched his teeth to keep his mouth from hanging open.

He _knew_.

Was Marcy that obvious? Did he know just how much Marcy wanted to avoid that kitchen, no matter what he said? Somehow, despite how casually he presented himself, Dori had picked up on… well, everything. Marcy’s thoughts. And he was _doing_ something about it. Marcy never imagined that would mean so much to him. He almost felt ashamed of how relieved he was. Still, he wanted nothing more than to grab Sundance’s shoulder and insist that he agree. _Yes, this is a fantastic idea, Sunny, don’t you think?_ Instead, he was limited to stopping in his tracks, and dragging an expectant stare between the two of them in the beat of thoughtful silence that followed Dori’s proposal. His fate lay in their hands.

When Sundance frowned, Marcy held his breath. “You do a lot of back and forth though,” he said.

Dori shrugged. “I’ll just have him man the till while I run orders.”

_Yes, yes, I can definitely do that!_ Army of buttons or no, the till was nowhere near as intimidating the vampire waiting in its sudsy den.

“Hmm, I suppose…” Once more, Sundance tapped the counter a few rounds with his nails, and he eyed Marcy sidelong, attention going from his face to his knee and then back again. Marcy still didn’t dare breathe. “…Okay. I guess that works.”

The breath whooshed from Marcy’s lungs and he tried to make it as quiet as he possibly could. It felt wrong to be so completely relieved over this, but he couldn’t help it. He wouldn’t have to step foot through those kitchen doors, not today. Maybe not tomorrow… maybe not until his knee was better, so long as helping Dori was as much of an option as helping Ji. And Dori was worlds better as an option. He seemed reserved, but not like Ji, and nowhere near as _creepy_. Marcy was too relieved to feel any proper guilt for thinking that this time.

Dori nodded, small smile spreading wider. “Sweet. So… go get your apron, Marcy, and then we’ll hang out.”

Sundance gave Dori a pointed stare, which made Dori’s smile falter just a little bit. His eyebrows twitched and the quirk of his mouth turned lopsided with something like chagrin.

“I mean, uh, work.” Dori offered the elf a serious look that barely contained his amusement and nodded, as if to reassure Sundance of just how genuinely serious he was. “Definitely work.”

The pinch of Sundance’s brow made it obvious he didn’t buy it, but he didn’t say anything in response. He just hummed, tapped his fingernails thrice more, and then pushed off the counter, signaling his exit from the conversation. He met Marcy’s gaze as he turned, offered one of his shallow smiles and a small wave. Then off he went, back to work. His tense presence went with him, and once he was gone, all that was left was Dori’s easygoing slouch.

“Make it quick,” Dori said, the small smile back in place. He nodded past Marcy’s shoulder. “We’ve got folks coming in.”

Marcy glanced back in time to see four girls his age filing through the door with a ring of the bell. His heart lurched, and he made a dash for the back office before he could get in the way. A sting on his leg made him wince, reminded him _why_ exactly he was working with Dori today, but it wasn’t enough to make him slow down. He whisked into the office without pause and snapped the door shut behind him. Letting out a slow breath, he rested his forehead against the doorframe, just for a second.

He’d recognized those girls.

“Heya, Marcy,” came a voice from behind him. He jumped and whirled. Sam paused in his typing to peer at him over a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. “Where’s the fire?”

“Uh,” escaped Marcy’s mouth before he could think, and sounded breathless enough to be mortifying. Marcy gulped, trying to fix the fact that his mouth had gone dry. “N-No fire. Just… grabbing my apron. I… just got here.”

“Nah, you’re good.” Sam pushed the glasses further up on the bridge of his nose and examined something on his computer screen. “Leg doing okay?”

A glance down revealed that the blood spot hadn’t gotten any bigger in the last five minutes, which Marcy was silently grateful for. He nodded in response to the question, and then realized maybe he should add something out loud, considering Sam wasn’t watching. “Um, yeah. It’s… better. I think. I’m gonna… work with Dori today, so I don’t move around too much.”

“Ah, I see,” Sam nodded and clacked a few of the keys. “Well, the till is appropriately uneventful.”

“Yeah…” Slowly, almost expecting the man to say more, Marcy leaned over and snagged his apron off the hook on the wall by the door, where all of them were kept. Sam’s was there now, left as the last one after Marcy looped his own over his head.

When Sam said nothing more, Marcy figured that was his cue to leave. As he turned to do so, not sure how to take the strange silence and seemingly unfinished conversation, Sam called after him.

“Hey, break a leg, kid.”

An awkward laugh tumbled from Marcy’s lips before he could swallow it, and then it was too late to take it back. So he waved a little wave instead, slipped out of the office, and shut the door quietly. He stood there, staring at the knob for at least seven seconds, wondering what exactly he’d just laughed at. Had Sam meant that as a joke? An ironic well-wishing? Or was it just supposed to be the generic phrase it usually was, with no further thought behind it? If that was the case, Marcy must’ve looked like a jittery moron, laughing at something perfectly normal…

Not that that was abnormal, for him.

He sighed, hung his head, gave his cheeks a few pats to snap himself into the present, and returned to the shop.

He should’ve taken longer.

The girls were still at the counter, Dori taking down their orders on a little note pad. One of them seemed to hang back, staring up at the menu on the wall, with a thoughtful pinch between her bold eyebrows. The sunlight from the door made it difficult to make out her features, framing her long navy hair in silhouette as it was, but he could remember her face perfectly. Big brown eyes, round cheeks. A small mole above her mouth. A little gap between her front teeth.

Sterling York.

His mouth was dry again. He snuck behind the counter as quietly as he could, hoping maybe, maybe if he hung back behind the wall of candy jars and said nothing, they wouldn’t notice him, wouldn’t recognize him. That day was a few weeks ago, right? Only Sterling’s friend—May?—shared classes with him, and she didn’t appear to be here today. She couldn’t point him out. They should be distracted enough by Dori and the menu—

“Marceline?”

His stomach flipped. One of the others—a blonde, he vaguely remembered her face from tryouts but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall her name—leaned forward, onto the counter beside Dori, just to get a better look at him. Dori didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, Marcy had been caught. Seemed like since he’d managed to avoid dealing with the vampire, the universe felt it necessary to find_ some_ way to make him equally uncomfortable. He gulped and did his best to offer a casual wave. “Uh—”

“That is your name, right?” the blonde said, looking suddenly concerned. “I hope I didn’t get it wrong—”

“N-No, that’s… yeah, that’s right.” Now he felt bad. She managed to remember him, and here he was at a loss for what to call her—or her other friends. At this point, he couldn’t very well just stay hidden behind the jars, as much as he really wanted to. After all, _she_ was still out there, and if she hadn’t seen him before, she definitely would now. There was no escape. He stepped forward, kept his eyes on the blonde as she swept herself back once he got closer to Dori’s right.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” she said.

Marcy tried not to glance behind her. “I, it’s, uh… I’m new.”

“Oh,” the blonde nodded. “Cool.”

Then followed a painfully awkward silence that made Marcy want to duck behind the counter and pretend to clean the shelves until they left. But considering the shelves looked straight as usual and only had a few things on them anyway, they probably wouldn’t buy it. It’d just be insulting.

Sterling stepped forward as a saving grace.

“Okay, I,” she started, her voice small, like the rest of her, but full and confident, “I think I’ve got it. I’ll have a Sprinkle Stack, but instead of the Banana, can I have Butter Cream? And some fudge.”

_Yes! She hasn’t noticed me yet!_

Dori marked down a few more chicken scratches onto his notepad, his small smile in place. “Sure thing. Extra fudge is two zinnos.”

“That’s okay!” Sterling smiled, the gap in her teeth flashing, and Marcy didn’t dare blink.

“We’ll get those out to you right away.” Dori tore the order from the pad and clicked his pen against the counter. “You said here, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” the blonde replied, leaning against the edge of the counter, disrupting Marcy’s line of sight. Her head hid Sterling from him. He blinked her into focus in time to catch the way she tilted her head to one side and quirked her lips in something like a smirk. “We like hanging out here and, uh… it’s hot outside.”

From the way Dori didn’t even look at her, instead setting the pen aside and giving the order a once over in his hand, he had no idea he was being eyeballed. Kinda like how Sterling hadn’t noticed Marcy’s gaze at all. Which Marcy thanked his lucky stars for, but somehow, he didn’t think the blonde appreciated the ignorance quite as much.

“Sure is.” Dori took a step toward the kitchen door. “You guys can find a seat then, and Sunny’ll bring you your order; I’ll have him bring the Stack too, ‘kay?”

Sterling just kept smiling, no longer blocked from view. “Okay, thank you!”

Dori slipped through the kitchen doors, which flapped shut behind him. The blonde pouted immediately, confirming Marcy’s suspicions, and slunk off of her perch on the counter.

And with Dori now gone, Marcy’s heart lodged in his throat. He was going to be stuck as the only person out here for the next couple minutes, and there was no way she _wouldn’t_ notice him. What was he going to do? What would he say? Suddenly, in a blink, her eyes were on him. Meeting his gaze. His mind hit a flat line.

“Oh, hey,” her smile faltered a little, but came right back after. Heaven help him, she was smiling at _him_. It pushed her cheeks up, turned her eyes into lemon wedges. “Hi Marcy.”

_She remembered my nickname._

He opened his mouth to respond, but choked on his own tongue. There were no words, nothing coming to mind. A second ticked by, silent. Heat flowered on the back of his neck.

Why couldn’t he say anything!?

“Uh,” he managed to drag from his throat, “…hi…”

_L.a.m.e._

Stupid, vindictive world, just had to put him in situations that made him want to sink straight into the ground and never come out again.

Sterling giggled. Great, she was laughing at him now. To be honest, he’d probably do the same in her place. “You work here?”

The blonde draped herself off the counter, enthusiasm gone now that Dori had disappeared. “Yeah, he says he just started. Lucky duck.”

Before Marcy could devote a few spare brain cells to thinking about what she meant, Sterling’s smile widened and Marcy swore it brightened the whole room. “Hey, that’s really cool! Is it nice here?”

Was it nice? Working here? He really couldn’t say yet. Not just because he’d only been here a week and had no real opinions quite yet, but literally because his tongue felt like lead and didn’t seem to want to move properly. His brain wasn’t functioning either, it kept giving him ‘um’s and ‘uh’s and little else to work with. He tried leaning on the counter—sidestepping the blonde—to make himself more casual, but it only succeeded in making him feel like a total dork and probably the least cool person alive. What did he think, that a little lean would distract her from the fact that all he’d been able to say to her so far was ‘hi’?

Finally, he did manage to nod weakly. He glanced around the room; maybe she’d follow his gaze and take those big eyes off of him long enough for him to actually breathe a second. “It’s, yeah, like, um…” He cleared his throat, shifted his weight. _DUDE, you’re so bombing this._ “It’s pretty nice.” _You’re just repeating her words back to her._ “I like the paycheck,” _now you sound like a money-grubber,_ “and the work isn’t too bad.” _Ending on a super vague, impersonal note. Fantastic. Real charming. She’ll love it._

At this point, her friends were moving off. Probably scared away by his poor social skills. He could hardly stand himself right now, so he didn’t blame them. But Sterling didn’t move yet.

“Saving up for something?” she asked.

Despite himself, he really wished she would stop asking questions. His answer-generator was malfunctioning and this was the worst question thus far. He didn’t even have an answer to that question when he was thinking coherently, much less now. The alternative answer, however, was equally embarrassing—and unfortunately, the truth.

“N-Not really,” he tapped his fingers along the countertop, suddenly finding the wandering twist of the marble pattern very intriguing. “Just… I just, it’s… it’s nice to have a cache, you know?”

_Yes, fancy words, those are good!_

_…I’m such a hopeless moron…_

She nodded slowly, and each nod was the snap of the lock on the invisible door between them. “Yeah, yeah, that’s… that is nice.”

_Great, now we’re both doing it. Congratulations, you infected her, doofus._

Just when he thought he might just keel over from the sheer amount of pure awkward threatening to drown him, Sterling shuffled where she stood, and took a single sidestep backward. “Well, I’d better… go—”

“Yeah—”

“—find my seat—”

“Yeah, yeah, right.”

She hummed a little, smiling again, her lips closed this time. His heart sunk like a rock. “See ya at school, I guess?”

“Yeah,” he breathed. He hoped she didn’t notice.

She ducked her head, turned, and walked away. Marcy watched her go, gaze trailing her until she reached a booth near the front door, where her friends made room for her and welcomed her back with smiles and a few lines of laughter. Once she sat down, all of the breath in Marcy’s lungs left him in the biggest sigh, and he sunk down to hide his face against his arms on the counter. That… was absolutely agonizing. And here, he’d thought he’d escaped discomfort today, when Dori spoke up for him, but no. Of course not. Of course they would walk in, _she_ would walk in. His entire body felt flushed. The marble was cold against his skin on one side of his arms, his forehead hot against the other. Shuffling a bit, he slid his elbows forward so he could rest his cheek against the soothing cool of the countertop. He made sure he faced the opposite way from the door.

Which gave him the perfect view of Dori standing right beside him. Marcy sucked a startled breath in through his nose, only to let it right back out and close his eyes, press his cheek harder against the counter. “I… I’m just… resting.”

“I see.” Dori’s presence moved closer. Something nudged Marcy’s arm, and then stayed there. Probably Dori leaning on the counter next to him. “You know them?”

“Mm. From school.”

“They in your class?”

“Nah. Cross country.”

“Ohh, you’re in track?”

“I’m always in track.” Marcy slowly cracked his eyes open in time to see Dori nod.

“That’s pretty cool. I’ve never been very good in track, but I always loved to watch meets.” Dori glanced down at him, and Marcy took a bit of comfort from that soft smile now. It wasn’t like what he was saying was particularly comforting or anything, but… Dori was just so calm about it. It made Marcy relax a bit more. “Tell me about them. The girls, I mean.”

Marcy frowned a little, feeling his eyebrows move against the inside of his elbow. Here, he’d thought they could take the conversation away from the thing making Marcy feel like an old radish—red and useless—and talk about more interesting things instead. Why did Dori want to know about them?

_Wait… is it the blonde? Hold on, she’s a high schooler… How old is this guy?_

In any case, too bad for Dori. There was nothing for Marcy to tell.

As Dori stepped around behind him and moved toward the freezer, Marcy raised his head and propped his chin on his palm, keeping his slouch. He did his best to keep the glance toward the girls’ tables as nonchalant as possible. “I don’t really know any of them except for… Sterling.”

“The one with blue hair.” Dori snatched up a waffle cone from the stack.

“Mm.” Marcy watched her laugh at something the girl beside her said. There was the gap in her teeth again. “She, uh… she’s a second-year. We don’t share any classes.”

“Just like to hang out in between or something?”

A frown settled on Marcy’s brow. That certainly wasn’t the most natural line of questioning he’d ever heard… He glanced sidelong at Dori, who appeared to be looking casually over the dinner crowd while he scooped an impressive stack of pink, blue and white onto the cone. “Not… really. We’re… not really friends or anything.”

_As much as I want to be._

“Do you want to be?”

“How—” Marcy stopped himself as soon as the word slipped from his lips, but it was too late. Dori smiled again. And Marcy found himself somewhat frustrated this time. “How do you… keep doing that?”

“Hm?” That smile slipped, replaced with what appeared to be genuine surprise, a raise of purple eyebrows. “Doing what?”

For a long beat, Marcy stared. Dori stared back, the blank expression unwavering, until he broke the eye contact to head over to a bin at the back of the counter space. _He seems… innocuous enough._ He wasn’t sure he should buy it though. Dori had picked up on the fact that Marcy didn’t want to work in the kitchen, somehow, despite Marcy agreeing to Sundance’s suggestion at first, so that meant he was at least somewhat intuitive. Intuitive enough to maybe pick up on the fact that Marcy had fumbled over himself while talking to Sterling, but only if he’d seen. Dori was in the kitchen at the time. Unless… unless he’d been watching?

“Nothing,” Marcy blurted, looking away from Dori’s back. “It’s… never mind.”

In any case, Dori had asked a question and Marcy wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. Firstly, it wasn’t exactly Dori’s business, was it? Who Marcy _wanted_ to be friends with… Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad. But it felt like a personal question. Which led to his ‘secondly’: it was a simple question with a simple answer. There was no real, legitimate reason not to say anything. If he’d been asking about Ji, that would’ve been one thing, but this was Sterling.

So Marcy shrugged. “She’s… pretty cool.”

He wasn’t about to give a straight ‘yes’ and sound like a desperate creep.

Dori returned nodding, the stack of ice cream having gained a coat of rainbow sprinkles and a light drizzle of fudge. “Having cool friends is cool.” He didn’t say anything beyond that, letting the conversation drop into a beat of quiet that spanned the time it took him to fish a cone stand from under the counter and tuck the Sprinkle Stack into the small temp freezer under the register. But Marcy wasn’t about to let the echoes of focus rest on him and his relationship issues for any longer than it had to, though. He felt the compulsion to change the subject, shift the focus to something, _anything else_.

“Are you still in school?” he asked, both curious and ready to be the one asking questions, not answering them.

Dori, shuffling back to his place to Marcy’s right now that his hands were free, just laughed. “Nah, nah, man. I was done with that, like… wow, over a year ago now… D***, feels like forever.”

So he had to be at least three years older than that girl… Wait, he didn’t say he’d graduated. He just said he was done with it. That could mean a number of things, if you really thought about it. Marcy glanced at his headband, the gauges in his ears—actually, he had several holes in his ears, now that Marcy looked closely—and the baggy clothes, an oversized yellow tee, cinched by the apron string, and a cheap pair of joggers. Ratty white sneakers, stained with time and use, encased his feet. He seemed… unkempt. Looking like that, Marcy’s mom at least would definitely have a few things to say about him. She’d probably call him a scamp.

What if… What if he’d dropped out?

“How old are you?” Marcy lowered the hand from his chin and stood a bit straighter, playing it cool His shoulders had begun to complain about his poor posture.

“I’ll be, uh, twenty. In like… well, September twelfth, so a few weeks.”

_Oh._ Heat flushed to Marcy’s ears again and he silently prayed it didn’t show. He really didn’t need Dori to know what he’d been thinking this time. Just in case, he pretended to scan his gaze across the eatery—where his attention inevitably came once more to Sterling’s table. “U-Uh, cool… Um, mine’s in September too. My birthday, I mean…”

Dori’s smile came back, and this time, Marcy gulped. Could he tell anyway? “Hey, sweet! Nobody else here’s in the same month. My mom and I are though, so we always celebrated both our birthdays at the same time.” The man stepped away from the counter once more, moved around behind Marcy and to his other side, next to the till. “You have any party plans yet?”

Marcy opened his mouth to answer in the negative, but snapped his teeth together again when he realized just why Dori had moved. A boy with a freckly face, who couldn’t be out of middle school, and a tiny little girl—probably his sister—came up to the counter. While the boy (Dori called him ‘Lonnie’, like he knew who he was) ordered a waffle cone for the road, the little girl stared up at Marcy with great big brown eyes, clinging to her brother’s fingers and staying close to his side. Marcy stared back, not sure what exactly he was supposed to do. Say something? Smile? What did kids even like?

He managed to muster up a little wave while Dori went about scooping some fudge ice cream into a waffle cone. A little smile stretched her round face and she pressed it against her brother’s arm to hide it.

That made one corner of Marcy’s mouth quirk up, despite himself.

Dori returned with the cone, handing it to the kid. It went straight to the little girl from there, who took it shyly. As the boy paid and turned toward the door, she carefully extracted her free hand from his and, taking a big old lick from the ice cream, waved her little fingers at Marcy, before they went straight back to her brother’s hand and off the two of them went.

“So?” Dori asked. “Party plans?”

Watching the pair close the door behind them, Marcy shrugged. “Not really…”

His companion hummed. “Well… we do birthdays here. That could be cool. We could put you in the corner booth. You could invite Sterling.” Dori gave him a nudge with his elbow, grinning.

Another wave of heat pricked the back of his neck, but along with that, Marcy couldn’t help a glance backward, over his shoulder, toward the kitchen doors. Yeah, he could invite Sterling. He could have the party here. And then his parents would get an up-close look at where he was working, if he was even still here by then. All he could picture was them catching a glimpse of a certain someone if he happened to leave the cave that was the kitchen, for any odd reason. He could just see the looks on their faces now—the subtle pinch between Dad’s eyebrows, the thinning of Mom’s lips. The glance they’d share with each other. Did Sterling know about Ji? Would she know how to spot a vampire? Marcy’s father certainly did. He had years of experience. And as soon as they were back home again, he would definitely ask questions. Possibly worse. Whether or not Marcy was still working at Hambleton’s before that, he probably wouldn’t be allowed to afterward.

_“Trust me, kiddo,”_ Dad would say, _“they’re bad news to humans. Best to avoid them if you can.”_

He gulped again, ripped his attention from the kitchen and shrugged to seem casual about it. “Maybe… Sibyl likes it here, for sure. My mom doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

“Come on a Saturday, for lunch.” Dori leaned forward onto the counter, smiling at him. “I’ll even wear something fancy. And you don’t hafta worry about Ji.”

Marcy’s eyes widened. He stared. Dori winked.

Oh, he could definitely read Marcy’s mind.

“Uh…” Marcy swallowed thickly, his tongue very suddenly stiff. His thoughts weighed on him, guilt and embarrassment frolicking hand in hand from his ears to his nose. “I… I’m sorry.”

_Way to make no contextual sense, Marcy. He probably has no clue what you’re talking about._

“Why?” Dori tilted his head to one side.

Marcy found himself glancing at Dori’s ears again, and cringed at himself. “I… I dunno. I guess… I didn’t mean…” What did he mean? How could Dori even know that Marcy had been eyeing his clothes? And thinking about Ji? What if he didn’t know and it just seemed like he did? How was he supposed to respond to that? _Make it not about you, make it not about you, this is embarrassing enough as it is…_ “He’s just… Is he always so…?”

“Scary?” Dori offered.

As soon as he said it, Marcy felt the shame hit him full force. That word was too strong, definitely. He shook his head and gestured vaguely with his hands. “…Stern?”

“Yes,” Dori said without hesitation. The smile remained, understanding and patient. “It’s his usual state of being.”

And here, Marcy had almost hoped Dori would say ‘no, he’s only like that sometimes’ or ‘once you get to know him, he’s great’. No such luck. Carefully, Marcy tested his weight on his bad leg, vaguely hoping the ache from when he’d first arrived would be gone, just to ease his mind that, no, he wouldn’t have to worry about working with Ji again any time soon.

Dori stepped back around to Marcy’s right side. “Can I ask an honest question?”

Marcy nodded, though he wasn’t sure what to expect. What sort of honest question? Did that mean that all of the questions Dori had asked before now were somehow_ not_ honest?

“You seem…” Dori paused, looking out over the shop, “anxious. About… well, I don’t know. I guess that’s the question. You okay?”

_Seems to me like you already know and I have no idea why._ Why ask if he knew the answer enough to reassure Marcy that his party-wear would be appropriate or that he shouldn’t worry about the vampire? Marcy tried not to let the ruffle of his feathers taint the tone of his response. “I’m… yeah. Yeah, I said I’m fine.”

“You almost seem… scared. Of Ji. If I’m being honest…” Dori didn’t look at him. He stared down at his steepled fingers instead.

_Stay calm, he’s not calling you out, he’s asking…_ “I-I’m not…” Marcy twiddled his own thumbs. “I’m just… not used to. People like him, I guess.”

Slowly, Dori nodded. Marcy couldn’t tell if he actually understood, or if he took the words at face value. Either way, all he replied with was a soft ‘I see’ and then silence. And when he didn’t say anything more for the next few minutes, until another customer approached the till and Dori told Marcy to try ringing her up this time, it seemed the conversation was over. For now or the rest of the afternoon, Marcy couldn’t be sure. He went about his tasks, doing his best to follow Dori’s instructions. Hye and Sundance stopped to check in, just before the after-dinner rush. Marcy found himself swept up after that, and Dori never got the chance to bring the subject up again.

One thing Marcy did know for sure, though: he couldn’t wait for his leg to get better. He was tired of this whole injury thing already.


	5. a bit of a pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It feels like so long since Marcy got to wait tables. He's stuck behind the counter, memorizing dish assembly and ice cream flavors and customer names, oh customer names!! His brain is melting. What can save him now?

* * *

Marcy stared over the long freezer, lined with two rows of massive tubs full of various ice creams in various amounts, a buffet of pure sugary goodness, and he felt a little queasy. The words “Sprinkle Stack” ricocheted back and forth between his ears like a tennis ball and, not for the first time that day, he was at a loss. He wracked his brain for the answer, but he’d never been great at memory problems. He was more of a ‘multiple choice’ kinda guy. His hands hovered in front of him, one white-knuckling an ice cream scoop and the other loosely gripping a crisp, cinnamon-hinted waffle cone. An empty waffle cone.

He took a deep breath, and used the scoop to point at the bucket of Marbled Strawberry. “This one first, right?”

Dori nodded. “Yep, you got it.”

Marcy did his best to try and hide the jitter in his hand while he gathered a generous scoop of the pink ice cream that was streaked with chocolate fudge, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the customer—whose name he’d already forgotten, in the span of just a couple of minutes—and the way the freckly-faced middle school boy was just _staring_. Watching. Silently. Waiting.

Trying not to look up, Marcy focused as much of his attention as he could on making sure the first scoop was properly packed into the waffle cone. Then he scanned over the buckets yet again, gaze jumping from Marbled Strawberry to Butter Cream, Pistacio Puff to Unicorn Sorbet to Peanut Brittle Bunches. Color, color, he tried remembering what color came next, rather than what name… He finally settled on Vanilla Blue, a tub filled to the brink with the same color as the tie he’d worn on his first day, and gestured to it.

“Correct.” Dori looked highly amused, that crooked smile of his curling one side of his lip. “Two for two.”

Marcy packed the second scoop firmly into place, held it for a second just like Dori had shown him yesterday, and then hummed as his eyes swept the flavors one last time. This one came much easier. It was always easier to remember the last thing in a list. He pointed out the Banana Blizzard, a tub of vibrant pastel yellow. “Banana last.” He moved to scoop before Dori even had the chance to respond.

“Bravo!” Dori gave him a little golf clap, for show. “You catch on quick, Marcy.”

Once the cone was properly stacked, Marcy set the scoop aside, stepped back—briefly meeting eyes with the middle school kid and attempting to flash an awkward, apologetic smile—and held it out for Dori to take.

Dori, however, shook his head. “Give it a shot this time. I think you can do it.”

Marcy hesitated. He glanced over to the giant metal tub tucked against the back wall, just next to the cappuccino dispenser and the cone storage. He’d taken care of the Stack part of this order; that was easy enough. Scooping ice cream wasn’t that hard (even if remembering flavors was), but that was only half of it. Now he needed the Sprinkle part which, over the course of the last two days since he started working behind the counter, only Dori had done, while Marcy watched.

So now, with great trepidation, he stepped up to the tub, which waited, full almost to the top with more rainbow sprinkles than had any right to be in one single space. He took up the giant shovel of a scoop that sat half buried in the tiny flecks of pink, blue, yellow, white, green. He watched the separate amount of sprinkles break away from their brethren and settle into the scoop, ready to serve their purpose—to make good on their name. All that remained was for him to actually pull it off.

The trick was to slather the stack with rainbow sprinkles, without letting it topple into the bin.

He recalled the way Dori had done it last time, tilted the cone just so—enough of a slant for sprinkles to stick, without compromising the center of balance. The last thing he needed was to have to re-scoop the whole thing, with that unsettling kid watching him the whole time. If he could just pitch it right…

Just as he settled the sprinkle scoop over the cone, ready to start showering on a coat of color, the innocent little mounds of frozen cream toppled forward from the base, and _fwumped_ into the bed of sprinkles in the most unsatisfying, unceremonious fashion possible. Marcy’s heart fell with it and hit his stomach with just as much decorum, leaving him to deflate as if his spine had just given out. He stared mournfully at the sad little lumps of ice cream, less of a stack now and more of a trio of technicolor snowballs in a bath of sugar sand.

“Ah, that’s okay,” Dori said, stepping up beside him and holding out a hand for the cone. “Everybody does that at least once. I do it, like, every other week. Don’t worry about it. Give it another go.”

With a heavy sigh, Marcy relinquished the dirtied cone to his supervisor and turned to start the process all over again. He really didn’t want to, but it wasn’t like he had another choice. Though, at this point, he was beginning to wonder when he’d be put back on his original waiting detail… His knee wasn’t wholly better, but it hadn’t bled for more than twenty-four hours. Sundance still eyed Marcy like he wasn’t sure he meant it every time he insisted ‘I’m fine’, but Hye kept coming by the counter to talk about random things like birds he saw in the parking lot that morning or the high score he got on the pinball machine at 2 AM last night, and Marcy found himself starting to miss working with the two of them. Not that Dori wasn’t nice too… but Marcy’s brain was starting to hurt with all the different things he needed to remember while working this part of the job.

As a waiter, there wasn’t much to remember beyond his own shorthand. As a waiter, everybody just told him what to do or get. It was easier. How Dori managed it all, Marcy hadn’t the slightest idea.

“I might adjust the temperature in here,” Dori said absently, cleaning up Marcy’s mess while Marcy re-stacked the Stack. “It might just be that the ice cream is a little too soft, what with how hot it is outside.”

That was nice and all, but maybe they might’ve thought of that before Marcy humiliated himself in front of a perfect stranger. A kid, who _wouldn’t stop staring_, no less. By the time Marcy had rescooped the Sprinkle Stack, the kid had even added a little impatient finger-tapping to the mix, wiggling his fingers along the edge of the marble counter and shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. Marcy got the unspoken ‘hurry up’ loud and clear.

While he let Dori handle the sprinkles this time, Marcy slid the ticket pad closer to himself. The pen trembled a little in his hand, as if he’d overworked the muscles and tendons that made his fingers function like a normal human being’s. He put more effort, though, into making sure his words came out right when he spoke to the customer.

“So, it’s just the, uh… the Sprinkle Stack. Did you want anything else?” He glanced up from the pad to the kid, but only for a fleeting moment. The pad was less intimidating.

“No,” the kid said in a small voice. “I only got two zees.”

“M’kay.” Marcy finished out what little Dori had left blank for him—the final cost plus tax, and his initials as the person who filled the order. He cringed at the hasty wobble in his handwriting, but he wanted it over with more than he wanted to be neat. Not for the first time, he wished this place had a normal, newer register that printed receipts and did all the calculating for you. Computers made a lot of things easier these days, and new stuff just kept coming, all of it better and faster by far than a measly little ticket pad. No handwriting required.

And no keeping the patron waiting either. No worrying over the fact that soon, Marcy would have to hand the kid his cone and bid him a nice day, send him off by name. Dori had told him what it was, somehow remembering it from other times the kid came in. He said that remembering a regular customer’s name and calling them by it was something they tried to do at Hambleton’s because it made customers feel special. Marcy didn’t really get it, personally. He didn’t really care whether or not random strangers remembered his name—not that many did, since his name specifically was a bit of a mouthful.

That wasn’t the trouble at the moment, though. Marcy wanted to do his best at this job, including the name thing, but the problem remained that he couldn’t for the life of him retain the names. Not with his whole body rebelling against him every time he had someone else’s eyes on him while he was trying to work. Half the time, details of work itself went out the window, and he could forget trying to remember who ordered what. And couldn’t to-go customers have been easier to remember, those who came to the counter to get one thing and one thing only, ready to leave right after? No, of course they couldn’t. His anxiety was no respecter of persons; it disregarded every name equally.

Still, he scoured his mind, which seemed to ring emptily like some kind of cavern, while he rung the kid up on the antique register. _L, it started with an L…_ He flinched a little less than yesterday at the intrusively loud_ clack clack_ of every old key, and the rattle the drawer made when it popped open. He gathered up the stacks of coins the kid had deposited onto the counter—change to the amount of two zinnos and five tiks: a set of cogs, a zip, and seven oodles—and spent a good amount of brain cells trying to drop each one into its appropriate slot without accidentally dropping them all at once. The frayed edges of his concentration barely weaved together enough to take out five tiks and hand them back as change. He made it quick; his palms were so sweaty, he didn’t want the coins arriving at their destination hot and moist. That was the actual worst.

“There you go,” he blurted, as Dori came alongside him with the cone. _Lenny? Larry?_ “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Why had he said that? It was change, just a couple of bucks; the only way to spend that these days _was_ all in one place.

Judging by the fleeting look of blank confusion that passed over the kid’s face, he didn’t get it either. But that look didn’t last very long when Dori held the cone out to him. In an instant, all of the brief confusion and impatient energy washed away, replaced by brimming joy. Dori had made up for where Marcy had failed. The sprinkles dusted the ice cream scoops like colorful confetti, and Dori had stuck a chocolate-coated cookie stick and a cherry on the top, neither of which usually went on Sprinkle Stacks as far as Marcy knew.

Of course, nobody was complaining, least of all the receiver of this decadent gift. After pocketing his change, the kid took the cone with a grin of pure delight, and Dori reflected it with his gentle smile. “Hope you like it.” Then Dori glanced Marcy’s way and nodded toward the kid rather pointedly. He wanted Marcy to close the sale.

With a gulp, Marcy closed the register drawer and leaned—casually, he hoped—against his side of the counter. “Don’t let it melt out there, kid. Eat it fast.”

The kid sniggered. “No kidding. Thanks!”

Marcy still couldn’t remember his name. ‘Lenny’ seemed pretty close, but there was no way he was gonna just up and call him that when he didn’t know for sure. Being called the wrong name was much worse than no name at all. And sure enough, the kid wasn’t sticking around long enough to let the awkwardness hang, and as he walked away with the cone in his hand and a spring in his step, Dori waved and called after him.

“See you later, Lonnie!”

_Lonnie!!_

Once the kid was gone out the door, Marcy sagged over the counter with a quiet moan, attempting to release all of the stress that had every muscle knotted, making his neck and head ache with the stress. “Lonnie. You told me that. Dang it…”

Dori chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll get the hang of it. Like I said, you catch on quick.”

Sure. That’s why he screwed up the ice cream. And flaked on every name. He was definitely catching on.

A shadow fell over him with the approach of another presence. He raised his head with a good amount of effort, to find Hye standing over him on the opposite side of the counter. The werewolf leaned against the counter’s edge like a cowboy ordering from the bartender, conspiratorial smirk and all.

“You look worn out,” said Hye in a murmur.

Marcy blinked. “…Yeah, maybe.”

“If you want…” Hye peered off one way, then the other, as if anyone in the vicinity might bother to try and listen in on whatever it was he was about to say. Marcy was tempted to do the same, if only because Hye seemed so serious about it. He managed to restrain himself; he didn’t need that embarrassment on top of everything else. “I could give you a little… somethin’-somethin’ to help you out.”

When those words bounced worthlessly off the frazzled remains of his brain, Marcy could do little more than blink again and try his best not to look as confused as he felt. “A little _what_?”

“You know.” Hye waggled his eyebrows. “Stuff. The stuff.”

Stuff. _The_ stuff. Implying that it was stuff Marcy should know about. Wracking his brain was, of course, no help. All he could think of was when lame crime lord villains in old movies talked about ‘the stuff’ before orchestrating cheesy drug deals.

Wait… that’s not what Hye meant, was it?

At his baffled frown, Hye did his best to contain his grin and carefully raised a yellow mug up from where he had it hidden behind the counter. He set it between them and slid it across the marble surface, toward Marcy, with a barely-muffled giggle. “The stuff.” His grin almost broke through.

Obviously, Hye somehow found this highly amusing, but Marcy was having a hard time getting the joke. He peered into the mug, where a familiar thick, inky-black liquid swirled. “…Coffee?”

“The _stuff_.”

The stuff Hye was offering, thinking it could help Marcy. Oh, Hye thought he was that kind of tired… He shook his head. “Oh, uh… no, I’m not sleepy. And… I don’t really drink coffee. It’s, it’s… yeah, just. My brain. It’s tired.”

Hye gestured to the mug. “It always does it for me. Wakes me up real fast!”

Considering how awake Hye seemed already, Marcy could only imagine what that on caffeine looked like.

Sundance strode up from the back and snorted, having overheard. “That’s certainly one way to put it.”

“If you’re tired, you should take a shot,” Hye urged, tapping the lip of the mug, making the coffee ripple. “It’s good. Even my cat likes it.”

While Sunny went on to say something disapproving about that, Marcy pursed his lips. His mom always told him he shouldn’t start drinking coffee until he was at least in his last year of high school. He never understood why, but he assumed she knew what she was talking about. Probably work stuff. She knew things. “Um… thanks, but I think. I think I’ll just… not. I’m okay.”  
Hye’s ears twitched and he tilted his head, looking briefly concerned. “You sure?”

Marcy feigned a smile. “Yeah, I’m-I’m sure. Thanks, though.”

The concern didn’t last long at all. Hye shrugged it off like an old jacket and scooped up the mug. “Suit yourself.” The moment he moved to raise the mug to his lips, Sunny all but _lunged_ for it.

“AH AH, nooooo…” Gingerly, the elf wove his fingers around the mug, carefully prying Hye’s larger, gloved fingers right off the ceramic, much to the werewolf’s dismay. “We are _not_ doing that.”

“Heeyyy…” Hye pouted. “But I made it!”

Sunny shook his head and leaned across the counter to set the mug far away from Hye. “Doesn’t mean you’re drinking it.”

Marcy took slow note of Hye’s wounded expression and, through the haze of his overworked memory, he felt a stab of pity—as well as more familiar ol’ confusion. “W-Why can’t he… have it?”

“Put it this way,” Sunny said, folding his arms over his apron while Hye looked on with the smallest of pouts. “We keep Hye away from coffee for the same reason we keep him away from alcohol. Because they both do the exact same thing to him. Werewolves don’t handle either very well.”

Hye’s pout intensified, with a little something like offense twisted between his eyebrows. “No they don’t, they do entirely different things.”

“Oh?”

“Oh yeah. One of them is like a bunch of scribbles exploding in my veins all at the same time.” He gestured with his hands, wiggling his fingers in what Marcy assumed was supposed to be an explosion. “ The_ other_ one is more like… honey,” here, he raised his arms and swept his hands down over his body in one big sweep, “looots of honey just _oozing_ down from my head to my toes. Totally different things, see? You can’t compare them.”

While Marcy wrinkled his nose at the way Hye said the word ‘oozing’, Sunny frowned and rose to Hye’s argument with a gesture of his perfectly pink manicure. “That doesn’t matter, they both have the same_ result_. First you get super giddy and laugh a lot, then you’re super petty and cry a lot. Then you throw up everywhere. Squiggles or honey, they both end up with someone having to clean up after you. Usually me.”

Hye then made one of the strangest expressions Marcy had ever seen on a face, wrinkling his nose, narrowing his eyes, and puckering his lips until they looked more like a duck’s. His whole face looked like it shrunk on his head. His fluffy ears flopped backward, just like a dog. Marcy half expected Hye might even start growling. He didn’t, but instead, his voice took on a very evident whine. “Yeah well, I’m still not wrong. They’re totally different—”

Sunny was already shaking his head. “Nooo, they’re not.”

“Yes they are!”

“They’re not.”

“Yes huh!”

“Nuh uh.”

From there, they devolved into tossing those same phrases back and forth like a couple of ping pong players and the noise of it turned into static adding to the fuzz behind Marcy’s eyes. It wasn’t hard to tune out at that point. Marcy let his gaze drift across the dining space, bouncing across all the different people sitting, talking, enjoying their ice cream and seemingly oblivious to the cluster of chaos congregated at the counter. He followed the flow of the room, the straight lines of chrome across the edges of the booths and the tables, the strip of checkered border mid-lining the wall, the big old clock hung on the far wall above the pinball machine and finally, to movement in the back hallway. Sam stepped out into the main space—when he’d left the kitchen and gone back to the office, Marcy didn’t know and couldn’t fathom how he’d missed that. He must’ve been busy battling the ice cream buckets or something.

Sam’s gaze fell right on the two bickering at the counter and with several very long strides that reminded Marcy of a giraffe, the boss had arrived at their little group. He stepped alongside Hye and Sunny, who simultaneously fell silent at his appearance.

“Your hands should be moving as fast as your mouths,” the boss said.

Hye instantly looked to and fro across the counter and, settling on the countertop itself, he unhooked the small spritzer from his hip like a gunslinger and started wiping down the marble surface with a napkin. Meanwhile, Sunny didn’t move from his spot.

“It’s a lull,” the elf explained. “Nobody new’s come in yet and everybody else has their orders. Besides, I was preventing a disaster. Hye almost drank coffee.”

Sam blinked slowly. “Did I ask?”

Sunny pursed his lips. “No, but I’m telling you.”

The idea that Sundance could so casually defy the boss almost bewildered Marcy right out of his funk. Particularly since it seemed so random. Wasn’t Sunny the stickler? The one who scolded Hye for being unprofessional on Marcy’s first day?

The explanation came with the melodramatic way Sam clicked his tongue and shook his head at his pastel pink employee. “Tut tut, Sundance. Talking back to the boss. Such behavior.” His tone spoke for just how little he took this seriously.

Though a hint of a blush brightened the elf’s nose, the most backing down he did was dropping of his arms to his sides and sheepishly shuffling his feet. “But we live together, so… it’s fine. I just think you should be on my side, here.”

Regardless of whether or not Sunny actually believed that, Sam didn’t seem to. He sighed, gave a vague circular wiggle of his hand in Sunny’s general direction. “I’m inclined to side with Hye now, just for that.” Behind him, Hye sniggered a little to himself. “Now, let it go and shoo. It shouldn’t be hard for you to find something to do. You’re good at keeping busy.”

With a sudden and uncharacteristic pout that could’ve rivaled Hye’s, Sunny at last stepped away, toward the back. He clomped away in whatever today’s heels were—Marcy hadn’t paid much attention—and disappeared into one of the bathrooms down the hall. Sam was left smirking in his wake, before he stepped opposite Marcy. He stretched a long arm across the counter to snag the mug of coffee, took a sip, ignored the way Hye glowered at the back of his head.

“You don’t even know what they were arguing about,” Dori said from close on Marcy’s right, making Marcy jump. He’d almost completely forgotten about him.

“Sure I do,” was Sam’s retort, taking another sip from the mug.

Dori raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“Mm.” Sam stared off into the middle distance and sipped again, loudly this time.

That made Dori snort, before he stepped away from the counter in order to reach under to the shelves below. He snagged up a roll of disposable rags and toss them right between Marcy’s face and Sam’s coffee. While Marcy flinched away from the sudden _whoosh_, Sam didn’t even blink. On the other side, Hye caught the roll with a quiet yelp and then grinned at it like an old friend.

“Sunny was right this time, unfortunately,” Dori said. Hye’s grin soured, though it was more sheepish this time.

“I think Hye was right,” said Sam without missing a beat. Marcy couldn’t even tell if he meant it. He glanced between the two of them, back and forth, and felt the fuzz coming back in the wave of general out-of-the-loop-ness that washed over him. He felt like he needed a translator, not for the first time today. Nope, it was just another case of him missing stuff entirely.

It helped a little when Dori rolled his eyes. “Uh huh, sure.”

Perhaps Marcy shouldn’t take Sam so seriously, then, if Dori didn’t.

Without bothering to offer any sort of defense for himself, Sam took another long beat of silence to knock back the last of the coffee, sighed contentedly, and set the empty mug between himself and where Marcy remained, still leaning on the counter because he couldn’t bring himself to move quite yet. Then he pointed at Marcy’s nose with a sense of dramatic intent. Instantly, the haze fled away and all of Marcy’s attention zoomed to that finger, putting it into sharp focus and making him stand up straight.

“New kid,” Sam began, disregarding his actual name for some reason, “I have a job for you.”

Marcy nodded right away, of course. A chance to do something other than stare down a rainbow of frozen dairy products and lament the cotton in his brain? Yes please.

Sam nodded back. “You get to make a delivery. Usually, we have someone else do it, but now we have you and you’re new, so you get the honors.”

This reasoning sounded somewhat suspect, but Marcy decided not to question it.

“So, here’s your mission,” Sam continued, hefting what looked like a small handheld mint-green cooler onto the countertop. “I need you to take some… _stuff_. To our shakerboarder.”

That was_ definitely_ suspect. The way he said ‘stuff’, Marcy might’ve thought he’d overheard the entire coffee snafu. The way he smirked, Marcy found the sneaking suspicion cementing into certainty. Had Sam known the context the entire time? When would he—wait, maybe he’d been leaving the kitchen when Hye came over. Marcy wouldn’t have noticed, since he’d been too busy trying to revive his deflated brain. That had to be it. Which meant Sam knew exactly what Hye and Sunny were arguing about. And hadn’t let on at all.

No wonder Sundance was put out. What a pain… Not the errand, of course. Just Sam and this simmering side of mischief. But if it meant he was getting out of here, Marcy wouldn’t say a word.

“It’s pretty hot out there,” Sam didn’t appear to notice the scrutiny he was under, “and we usually take him a little something about now. I’ve put in a little extra. He’s just two blocks that-a-way.” He pointed off over Marcy’s shoulder, to the west. Marcy glanced over his left as if he could actually see where Sam was pointing, which only resulted in him ogling the cluttered menu wall behind the coffee machine.

Still, he knew where Sam meant; Bushfort wasn’t hard to navigate. Two blocks west was the junction with Tweet Street, the road that came from the new overpass. Made sense as an outpost for a shakerboarder. Cars came through straight off the freeway on their way to the little gas station up the road, on the border between Bushfort and Honeyvale. Though, considering the lack of new faces coming through the door, traffic must be slow.

Of course he could remember street names but not peoples’ names. Of course that would be the hand he was dealt. Now he could look like a total jerk.

While he wallowed inside, he nodded outside. “I think I know where you mean.”

With abrupt intensity, Sam thrust out an open hand, palm up, and he pinned Marcy with a look of such dramatic seriousness, it took every ounce of concentration for Marcy to avoid flinching away. His eyes bore into Marcy’s, which meant that first Marcy wanted to hide and next, he wanted to look away. The first, he managed to resist. The second, he did but only in a glance because it somehow felt rude to look away now.

“You’re the only one who can do this,” Sam said with gravitas. “It’ll be dangerous. You should take… a water bottle.”

The man didn’t even crack a smile after the words left his mouth and hung like a weighty punchline in the air between them. Frankly, Marcy wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the ridiculousness or die a little more inside. Dori saved him from the choice by scoffing, reaching under the counter yet again, and pulling up a bottle of cola from the pack they kept there within easy reach. He passed it off to Marcy, who took it blankly—the bottle was easier to focus on than Sam’s drama.

“Uh,” he said without looking up from where he was pretending to read the label, “yeah, sure. I can do that.”

“No bike,” said Dori, leaning onto the counter beside him and dragging the cooler closer. “Shouldn’t tempt fate.”

“_Dangerous_,” Sam whispered.

Marcy cleared his throat to cover the chuckle that threatened to escape him. He scooped up the cooler, and was suddenly very tempted to peek inside. “I mean, it was fine this morning but… yeah, okay.”

They saw him off with simple waves without following him beyond the counter space. Sam didn’t lighten up at all in the time it took him to leave, maintaining his melodramatic facade and even saluting him on his way out for heaven knows what reasons, as if Marcy was headed off to war and not to deliver whatever this was to a guy with a sign. Marcy kept his expression mostly neutral as he shoved his way into August’s evening heat, even managed a quick smile and nod of polite goodbye before he struck off. Once he was outside and well beyond easy view from the shop windows, Marcy chanced a glimpse inside the cooler; a snack pack of nuts and a tiny sundae cup were tucked neatly inside atop a disposable spoon and a small ice pack.

Stuff indeed. Marcy shook his head to himself, slipping the cola into the cooler and snapping the lid back in place. They were all so dramatic.

Now, if the guy with the sign was Ji, then Marcy would understand. That would definitely be like marching into a minefield, cargo aside.

This guy—what was his name again?—wasn’t like that. Or at least, Marcy didn’t think he was. It was as he strode briskly past the auto shop halfway down the first block that it occurred to Marcy that no, he hadn’t actually met this guy yet. He’d only seen his picture. His smile had seemed genuinely bright in that picture, but that could be said for a lot of people. Jasper, for example; in his school photo from last year, he grinned at the camera with enough enthusiasm, he looked ready to leap off the stool and rush the photographer. That didn’t make Jasper any less of a pain in the neck to deal with in person.

For all Marcy knew, this shakerboarder could be exactly like that.

His steps slowed considerably. And immediately sped back up again, because he remembered he was carrying frozen things. The cooler wouldn’t be much protection in heat like this. So much for a break. Perhaps Marcy would have to pay more attention than he thought. And he figured he ought to start with remembering the guy’s name before he got there. So, he resigned himself to a steady pace, passed the little church at the first corner and crossed the street he usually took home. The last block consisted of a row of old shop buildings on the north side and some kind of big garage and Little Jim’s Convenience Store on the southwest corner of Eleventy-First and Tweet.

It was from this very corner, under the big street lamp, that a steady pulse of bass and synth echoed out from what must’ve been a stereo, in the midst of a handful of people clustered on the sidewalk, surrounding someone who was moving around a whole lot more than the rest. When he drew closer, Marcy noticed a number of phones out and aloft, recording the person at the center who seemed to be mid-dance break, and spotted the stereo sitting back at the edge of the bank of grass, a Hambleton’s sign propped up against it, seemingly abandoned by its carrier.

At first, Marcy couldn’t spot his target among the ten-odd people standing around. The guy couldn’t have been far, since his stuff was still here, though it seemed to have been turned into some kind of impromptu street performance. He looked for ginger hair—because that, he could remember—and didn’t see it anywhere. Al he could see was a lot of brunette, two blonds, and one… well, one head was glowing.

That happened to be the person at the center of the little audience. The guy was moving too much for Marcy to notice too many details of his face, but the hair was hard to miss. It was a vibrant neon green—no, blue. No, it was changing colors… Like fiber optics on those plastic Christmas trees some bargain stores sold. Which… definitely wasn’t normal behavior for hair, so that meant it had to be—

“Magic,” Marcy murmured to himself, inching a bit closer. Over the next person’s shoulder, he watched the dancer move, spin, twist this way and that. The guy looked young, probably the same age as Hye or Dori, but much broader in the shoulders. Actually, he was broader all around, but that wasn’t hard, since both Hye and Dori were stick-thin. Tattoos adorned his biceps, a heart on the left and three stripes around the right. He swung and stopped his arms and legs more like an automaton than a human, and human he most definitely was judging by his ears. Marcy didn’t know a single thing about dance, but it sure did look cool. And Marcy could see the effort behind every move too; not a motion half-hearted, no matter how much he practically dripped with sweat in the evening sauna. That was some dedication, despite being just a street performer.

A human wizard dancer. Such a strange combination.

After a dramatic beat breakdown and the dancer’s movements slowed for a moment, his eyes—a striking shade of golden yellow—swept the cluster of people around him and somehow, someway, found Marcy and stopped short. Without thinking, Marcy dropped his gaze straight down to his toes.

Why were people so good at picking him out of a crowd? He wasn’t that outstanding. He didn’t want to be. Why couldn’t he just stay unnoticeable, like an extra in the background of a movie scene? Nobody paid attention to them…

“All right,” the dancer said, through heavy breaths, voice much higher than Marcy had expected given his size, “I think that’s it for now, guys. Showtime’s over.”

Scattered applause rippled through the tiny crowd, and when Marcy chanced a look up, several took a moment to drop something on the ground in front of the performer—probably tips. They started breaking off shortly after, and several of them bid the dancer good night before they left. The dancer smiled wide at every one of them and sent them off pleasantly.

“Thanks, George; I appreciate it.”

“Hope your dog’s doing better, Talia.”

“Uhh, lemme get it… Jezreel? Yes!”

Did he know all of these people? Marcy hung at the back as the bystanders passed him by and watched the ones the performer called out by name with a strange mix of envy and shame stewing in his gut. If only he could figure out how to do that… He didn’t understand why it mattered so much, but as it stood, it did matter. It mattered to Dori, it mattered to Hye. And what was important to them was important to the job. And yet, he just kept on klutzing his way through…

“Hey,” said the dancer, scooping up what looked like a stick from beside the boom box, punching the power button on the stereo at the same time. “You’re Marceline, right?”

Marcy’s eyebrows jumped on his forehead. Wait, did he know this person? Had he completely spaced on that too?

Though, he was fairly sure he’d remember if he knew a wizard dancer…

The dancer gave the stick a wave in the general sky-ward direction and, just like that, the glow in his hair vanished away, leaving perfectly normal ginger hair behind. Ginger hair and yellow eyes, now the face was familiar. _This_ was the shakerboarder!

Whose name Marcy still couldn’t recall.

Now he felt even worse. How had he missed that? He was staring him right in the face!

“Uh,” Marcy managed, “yeah…”

“Hey, cool! I get to meet you. Officially anyway; I don’t think almost running me over counts.” The dancer offered him a wink and a grin—a reasonable gesture, nothing like Hye’s toothy beam or Dori’s cryptic smirk. He took a moment to swipe his hands off on his loose jean shorts and then held one out to shake. “I’m Giuseppe. But you probably already knew that…”

Almost running him over…?

That day. Before the crash, the person coming around the corner. With the sign.

Through the brief handshake, Marcy did his best not to let his shame bleed through to the surface. It was enough that this guy remembered that horrific near miss to begin with, so perhaps it was better that he continue to think that Marcy had just as good a memory… kept things simple. Without lingering on that thought too much, he held out the cooler in return, ready to be rid of its burden. “Uh… sorry. About that… Um, Sam said— I-I brought… the stuff.”

“Mmm, the stuff, eh?” Grinning, Giuseppe took the cooler and peered inside. “Ah, the best stuff.”

“I hope the ice cream didn’t melt…” Perhaps Marcy should’ve checked first. That would be unfortunate. He massaged a hand over his neck and regretted it instantly, feeling a coat of sweat.

“Nah, I think it’s okay.” Shuffling over and sitting next to the stereo, Giuseppe plunked the cooler on the sidewalk in front of his dusty sandals. He used one hand to unload the precious cargo and the other to tug at his tank top—cherry red, darkened with sweat—and fan himself. With his head, he nodded to the space next to him. “You look a little tired. You can sit down if you want. I’ll split with you.”

Marcy’s very first primal, compulsory instinct was to, as anyone would, says ‘heck yes’ because who turns down ice cream unless you’re unfortunate enough to be allergic to it? And even then, he had friends who ate it anyway. He glanced at the cooler. Almost immediately, two buzz-killing thoughts occurred to him at the same time.

The first was that the sundae serving was very small. Definitely a personal serving, made especially for Giuseppe and Giuseppe alone. Splitting it would just be… well, just sad.

The second thought prompted him to glance over his shoulder, down the street and onward in his mind’s eye, back to the shop. Sam would probably be waiting for him to report back. And Dori probably wanted him behind the counter, so he could continue teaching him the ways of mind-melting memorization. And he didn’t even want to begin considering what Sunny would have to say about him taking an extended, impromptu break on the clock. Hye wouldn’t mind though, so there was that.

All in all, hanging around here, even for ice cream and a break, probably wasn’t the best idea.

“I-I…” Marcy sighed. “I dunno…”

Giuseppe pulled the sundae out of the cooler. “Sam won’t mind five minutes.”

“It’s… not Sam I’m worried about.”

Giuseppe paused his wrestling with the plastic wrapping around the spoon and actually laughed. “Oh, I see… Well, Sam’s the boss, right? So if he doesn’t mind…”

He had a point.

So he sat down, and Giuseppe offered him the sundae with an invitation to eat the whole thing, which had Marcy fighting not to smile too broadly. With as much discretion as he could manage, he tackled the sundae with about as much gusto as Sunny had when he stole Hye’s coffee. Unlike said coffee, the ice cream felt so nice and ice cold in his warm, sweaty hands. He didn’t even mind how it made his fingers numb. The heat was melting it fast, so he had to eat quickly. While he ate, Giuseppe sipped his cola and made conversation, as normal people did.

“How’s the leg?”

“Mm. Okay…”

“What do you think of Hambleton’s?”

“It’s okay…”

“You’re a freshman, yeah? How’s high school?”

Marcy shrugged, just to shake things up. “Okay…”

So conversation still wasn’t Marcy’s strong suit. But Giuseppe either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. He just smiled and nodded, like he understood, offered some sort of positive response (“nice, that’s good”), and then talked a bit about himself, which Marcy was grateful for. It took the attention off of him. Giuseppe didn’t talk non-stop to fill the silence like Hye, but the small talk between questions didn’t feel stifling somehow. He gave quaint, bite-sized bits and didn’t watch Marcy while he did, which Marcy took to mean he was under no obligation to respond. So he mostly just listened. Not that he would remember much of anything Giuseppe said… which left him stewing on his sheepishness all the more, and it grew weightier with each bite of ice cream.

“I’ve worked here ten months,” Giuseppe said after a beat. “Just after they opened. Tried the waiter thing for a while and that was nice. If I had to do anything else, it’d be that, but I do like being out here.”

Marcy, mid-bite, briefly panicked at his own timing, swallowed the hunk of vanilla without letting it melt in his mouth, just so he could respond within a reasonable few seconds. “So… what do you do out here, exactly?”

“Other than wave a sign around, you mean?” Giuseppe chuckled. “Well, you saw. I do freestyle, see, so I use that to draw more attention. And I get to meet people too, which is an added bonus.”

Now, it could’ve been his body letting him know ‘hey, you ate that frozen stuff too fast, you idiot’ and not the thought of that middle school kid, but either way Marcy couldn’t hide a cringe. He’d certainly never thought of having to meet people as a bonus of any kind. He wanted to leave it at a ‘to each their own’ but that just made him feel worse. “It sounds… tiring.”  
Giuseppe just shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. Days like today, yeah, it’s hot. But the people are the same. I get to make them smile. Can’t ask for more than that, right?”

Though he nodded, Marcy couldn’t stop the stab of guilt that hit him between the eyes. Or maybe it was just the brain-freeze, but hadn’t he just been complaining to himself about having to deal with people? And after he’d been inside, air conditioned, barely moving beyond three feet in any direction for hours. All that, and Marcy could only think about how annoying it was to remember names. Here, this guy’d spent all day outside, under the late summer sun, hot, sweaty, dancing around with a piece of cardboard non-stop, and what was he doing? Thinking of how he can make them smile. It made the voice in Marcy’s head sound selfish…

“I dunno…” Marcy massaged the space between his eyebrows. “I’m… people are kinda… intimidating. To me.”

“Ah,” Giuseppe hummed, “well, that’s okay. Some people can be scary.”

_Like Ji. And kids. And girls…_

“But they’re still people, right? Most of ‘em are probably just as intimidated by you as you are by them.” Giuseppe paused, taking another sip from the cola bottle. “Just takes time. And practice, you know. Nothing comes easy, not really.”

“Yeah, I guess…” Slowly, Marcy blinked past the last of the brain-freeze. “It’d be nice if it did, though.”

That made Giuseppe laugh again. “Ain’t that the truth.”

By the end of five minutes, Marcy scraped the bottom of the little sundae cup, determined to get the last remains of fudge tucked away in the corners. With ice cream settling in his stomach, he felt… _almost_ ready to make the short hike back up to the shop to finish his evening. Almost. The sidewalk wasn’t too uncomfortable, though, and a part of him was sorely tempted to just hang around a bit longer, even if every ounce of sense in his brain told him that he definitely should _not_.

“Well,” Giuseppe said by way of introducing the end of their little respite, hauling himself to his feet and offering Marcy a hand up, “we better scoot. I need to scout out tomorrow’s route. Maybe tell Sam I’ll be back in like… an hour. Maybe later.”

Marcy nodded but barely processed what he said. He looked up Eleventy-First street, biting at the inside of his lip. Maybe, after he got back and sat through a miniature lecture from Sundance about long breaks, Sunny and Dori would see that his knee was basically healed now and he could go back to working with Hye. Yeah, he could hope anyway…

Mostly, he just didn’t want to go back to stressing over names.

People like Dori, Hye and Giuseppe? Superheroes. They had to have some kind of fantastic memory, to be able to retain all those names and not get them wrong or forget them. If only he had a superpower like that, then this would be a piece of cake. He’d never have to worry about making a fool of himself again.

But superpowers were for books and movies.

Magic, however…

“Hey,” Marcy asked, before Giuseppe gathered up the stereo. “How’d you… I mean… You remembered their names.”

Sign already in hand, ready to be carted off, Giuseppe paused, frowned. Great, Marcy was being confusing again. “Yeah?”

“And… A-And you remembered mine too. How’d you do that?” With as much dignity as he could muster, Marcy avoided a trepidatious glance over his shoulder in the shop’s general direction and contained the energy bubbling in his throat to a mere shift of weight and absent tap of his arms against his side. “How do you just… people??”

That made Giuseppe smile, which did a little to settle Marcy’s stomach. He thought for sure he’d be laughed at.

“I dunno how helpful my advice will be,” Giuseppe offered, tucking the sign under his arm. “Everybody’s different. That’s the thing about people. The way I interact with people is what’s best for me, but maybe not what’s best for you. But uh… I guess, just. Make them smile. However you can, think about how you could make their day a little better, and the rest may just…” he shrugged, “take care of itself.”

With that, the shakerboarder bid Marcy good evening, gathered up his things, cooler included, and set off down Tweet street just as the lights came on in the convenience store sign. The sun had hidden itself behind Bushfort’s rooftops by now, throwing every shadow long and wide. The streetlamps would come on soon. Marcy figured he ought to be back before then.

Make them smile, huh?

The sidewalk offered no additional counsel as Marcy eyed the toes of his shoes with each deliberate step, trying to fall into a rhythm, mulling the possibilities over in his mind. This was an option for strategy, to be sure, but no battle plan… Knowing what made people smile was the hardest part. If watching him fail at scooping ice cream couldn’t make a middle schooler smile, what hope did he have? He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d successfully made someone smile_ on purpose_ and not because they were laughing at his expense.

He sighed. And Giuseppe had made it sound so easy.


	6. cat's outta the bag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All this time, Marcy thought he was doing the right thing. The smart thing. The helpful thing. The last thing he wanted was to be a pain. Dang it, now he's gone and screwed it all up. No wonder Ji didn't like him.

* * *

It started innocently enough, as all things with Hye seemed to.

“Wanna stay for dinner?” the werewolf asked.

At first, all Marcy could do was wonder if the shop had served dinner last week and he’d somehow just missed it. He was certain he would’ve remembered smelling savory smells had there been any, but at the same time, perhaps he’d been so preoccupied trying to keep up with the pre-weekend rush that he’d missed the dinner time entirely. Was he really that spacey? Enough to miss what he was carting out to tables? Did any small-time shop like this even serve dinner past seven o’ clock?

It must’ve taken Marcy so long to puzzle through these possibilities, staring off at nothing in the midst of the peachy-hued sunlight streaming through the shop windows, that Hye actually took notice and seemed to reconsider. He raised a finger to tap against his lips and his ears flattened out sideways in the most doggishly ponderous way, it tore Marcy from his musing and almost made him smile. 

“Uh, I mean, if you want,” Hye explained, eyebrows pinching at the middle, like his own words confused him. “Sam’s a good cook. But you probably know that already… He makes good dinners. We always eat once we’re finished cleaning up after closing time.” Oh, now it made more sense. “We could hang out a little, just in case… well, in case it’s your last actual day, you know?”

That seemed fair, all things considered. Marcy nodded slowly, understanding, though not agreeing to the plan just yet. He was a bit distracted with the thought of tomorrow.

Today was the first day since he’d crashed that he’d finally been able to return to waiting work, since his body had finally started to do its job right, and it just had to be Friday. His last official, for-sure-and-certain day. The end of his shift had loomed like some great doorway with no windows and barbed wire on the top ever since he set foot across the threshold. Tomorrow, he’d come in for work, on time presumably, and he’d have to talk with Sam to see whether or not the situation would be made permanent. Or, as permanent as a high school job ever could be. Hye talked about it all day, kept asking what Marcy was gonna choose. 

Frankly, he didn’t really know for sure yet. On one hand, he liked the work, mostly. And obviously, he still appreciated the idea of the paycheck that would be waiting for him every other week. On the other hand, he still couldn’t remember any names, the counter was a monster, and the worst… well, that was easy. The worst waited behind the kitchen doors.

Despite that, Hye’s invitation seemed so… quaint. Innocently endearing. Marcy didn’t know why Hye wanted to hang out; he wasn’t all that interesting to be around. But the fact that Hye wanted to spend time with him outside work… a part of him had to admit it was kinda nice. A little unnerving, a little less professional than Marcy preferred, but… nice. Nice enough for him to seriously consider it. He glanced up from their place standing by the counter to get a good look at the large clock on the back wall above the pinball machine; 7:23 in the evening. He had forty minutes of work left. He’d have to call his parents and let them know he’d be home late; Mom wouldn’t like it, but there wasn’t much at all to worry about in Bushfort. His parents didn’t even know about Ji. 

And he had his silver necklace. Worst case scenario, he ran cross country. He was fast, even with his knee banged up. He’d be fine.

He did his best to pretend his heart didn’t thump a little harder for a second or two.

“I think Sam’s making meatballs,” Sunny said, suddenly behind the counter, and it made Marcy jump, which in turn made Hye giggle.

“Yeah, those’ll be really good,” the werewolf replied through his grin. “And you could see upstairs. And meet Spot!”

Marcy frowned. “Wait, Spot?”

“His cat,” said Sunny.

Spot. A cat named Spot. Marcy blinked slowly to process this. “You… your cat’s name is—”

“Yeah!” Hye drew himself up, puffing out his chest with great pride. “She’s a sweetie.”

He didn’t understand. “B-But why—”

“Because it’s usually a dog’s name.” Sunny reached under the counter and pulled out the roll of disposable towels and a bottle of cleaner. He gave the countertop a quick spritz and started cleaning. “He thought it was clever.”

“It is! My cat can’t be conventional, that would just be boring.” Hye waved his gloved hands at Sunny, as if he could shoo the elf’s words from the air between them. Then, just as abruptly as Sunny had appeared, Hye’s face split with a gasp and a grin of sudden realization. He riveted his dark eyes right onto Marcy, lurched toward him and Marcy thought for a second he might even reach out and grab him. He barely managed to keep his own feet rooted on the spot, containing the fleeting thought of escape. 

“Hey, we could have, like, a sleepover!” Hye said it with such glee and a glint in his eyes, Marcy almost forgot to be a little confused.

“Aren’t you…” he glanced between the elf and the werewolf, “a little old for those?”

“Yes,” Sunny said without glancing up.

“Heck no!” Hye actually did grab onto Marcy’s arm this time and he gave him an urgent shake back and forth. “You can’t get too old for sleepovers! They’re fun forever.”

Marcy begged to differ. Who knew what the kids at school, people he was only just getting to know (his friends? Could he call them that yet?), would say. That said, it occurred to him then that he actually had no clue just how much ‘too old for sleepovers’ the two of them were. He’d never asked, and they’d never said. Should he ask? Mom always told him asking ladies their age was rude, but she’d never said anything about anyone else. Not that he could recall anyway. He assumed it was fine. “Wait, how old are you exactly?”

“Eighteen.” Sunny tossed a towel to Hye; it hit the werewolf in the chin and floated down his chest a little before he released Marcy from captivity just to catch it. “We just _graduated_ this year. Not that you’d know it, with Hye.” As pointed as the words sounded, he spoke them with a crooked smile that put his amusement on full display.

Hye didn’t seem to take it badly either and instead held the towelette over his heart, like a pledge. “And let it never be otherwise! Life’s too long to spend it getting old.”

Marcy had no idea what exactly that was supposed to mean, so he decided not to try and figure it out. Sunny must’ve done the same, since he just shook his head and snatched up the bottle of cleaner.

“Come on. Let’s start on the tables.”

The house had cleared out fifteen minutes ago. No one new was coming in, so while they wiped down the booths and tables, Marcy mulled over the proposed scheme. It sounded so nice, in theory. Enjoying some of Sam’s cooking (he’d tried one of his homemade bagels yesterday as a snack, and if Sam’s other cooking was anything like that, far be it from Marcy to turn down an offer like that), hanging out with Hye and Sunny, who apparently weren’t as far gone from his peer group as he’d assumed when he first started. His mind had registered ‘older than me’ and just stuck with that and left him feeling nothing but intimidated. But they weren’t so high above him. They’d just left high school, and he was just starting. They were new adults and he… well, he was almost there. That was close enough, right?

And they liked him. Sappy though it was, Marcy couldn’t get over that. Like his sister said, he was boring as he was quiet. It was weird enough to think maybe he had a couple friends in class, _maybe_; moreso that maybe he was making friends with people at work. Was that something everybody did? He wasn’t sure, and even if it was, he was far from equipped to handle that. This was definitely one-hundred percent the work of the other parties involved. Those kids at school—what were their names again? Zach-something and the kid with wild hair… Rush? He was probably completely off base—and these guys didn’t seem to mind his lack of intelligent conversation at all.

If he stayed the evening, or even the night, he was positive that Hye and Sunny would more than carry the conversation. They could banter like nothing Marcy had ever seen.

But there was the little matter of his pride to contend with; guys his age didn’t really do the whole ‘slumber party’ thing. Girls did that. Zach and Wild Hair would most definitely judge him. And more than that…

Staying any later than he had to meant the almost inevitable possibility of having to interact with Ji.

He changed his mind. Screw his pride, Ji was the only real reason why any human would be wise to refuse to stay here. Sure, his necklace might (_might_) keep his immediate person safe, but that wouldn’t stop Ji from eyeing him like he was lunch. It wouldn’t get Marcy out of having to occasionally, simply for the sake of manners, talk to him. It would be Saturday all over again, sans wounds fresh off the Stupid Train. All sorts of awkward and more passive aggressive eye contact than Marcy cared to deal with. Especially if the vampire still had some kind of problem with him. 

From what Dad said and what Marcy could find online, it just seemed to be a normal thing for vampires, like it was in their nature—antagonizing humans. And humans specifically. Elves, they could match vampires in power, so they were out of the question as far as harassment was concerned. Werewolves too. Hares, Mice, all those others, they knew what was good for them and avoided vampires like the plague. Humans alone were a special balance of weak and generally stupid, enough to make them easy and convenient targets. 

Marcy wanted to avoid that stigma, if he could.

But Hye seemed so excited about it…

“If you stayed the night, we could make popcorn and chocolate chips and watch a movie,” the werewolf rambled as he gave a booth a thorough wipe-down. “We’d have to make sure nobody else has plans, but I bet they’d be fine with it and I bet Giuseppe would watch with us, and it’d be super fun. Do you like poker? We could play poker; I’m really good at it though, so there’s that. My grandma taught me.”

“You mean she taught you to cheat,” Sunny said from one of the tables, smirking.

Hye looked aghast. “Never!”

Marcy didn’t know if Hye was telling the truth or not, but it made him smile anyway. If he did stay, he would definitely not be bored. That was more than he could say about the alternative dinner at home.

The kitchen doors went_ fwip-swish_ and Marcy glanced over as a new presence intruded upon the lighthearted atmosphere. And how could it not? Ji, free of his apron now and draped in his over-sized black hoodie, took two steps out of the kitchen and instantly hunched over, face twisting, eyebrows knotting low over his icy eyes, like something had greatly offended him. His gaze hopped from the front door, to Marcy, the next thing of interest over, since he’d taken to cleaning the tables closest to the exit. Marcy almost froze, but the focus was so fleeting, he didn’t have time to react before Ji’s attention had moved on to Hye and then Sunny.

“I’m clocking out,” Ji announced in a grumble, squinting, stuffing his hands into his generous pockets. Without further adieu, he left the service space and practically trudged into the shadows of the hallway that led to the office.

“’Kay!” Hye called after him, waving his towel even though Ji was no longer watching. “See you upstairs!”

Ji disappeared, but Marcy’s unease did not. No, he most certainly would not be bored… one way or another. 

Hye didn’t seem effected by Ji’s threatening aura at all. Was it because they all shared the same space? Was the vampire’s atmosphere just something one got used to? Marcy couldn’t imagine that. It’d drive him straight to the funny farm, out of his mind with pure paranoia, watching over his shoulder for those eyes and those fangs day in and day out; that, he could imagine. And it wasn’t a pleasant thought. 

“So, what do you think?” Hye skipped over. “Do you wanna, or…?”

Did he want to? Yeah. Probably. Should he, though…?

Slowly, he found himself nodding, despite himself. “Dinner sounds cool.”

He didn’t mention staying the night and honestly hoped Hye would get the message. Dinner, yes, sure, he could probably handle that. Sleeping under the same roof as a vampire? Nah, not today.

It was hard to say whether or not the werewolf thought it through that much, considering he seemed preoccupied with a little hop and something that could vaguely be called a jig (but only vaguely), mouth split in one of his grins. The jig turned into a hop, and the hop turned into a hug so sudden that there was no way Marcy could avoid it. The werewolf’s long, gangly arms encased him sideways, locked his own arms against his body so there was no way to awkwardly return the gesture, even if Marcy wanted to—which he didn’t. He stood there, stiff, holding his breath and just waiting for it to be over. Trouble was, the only person who’d ever hugged him for such an extended period of time and with such enthusiasm was his mother.

After a second or two (though it felt like a whole minute) of dragging Marcy’s body in an aimless sway, back and forth, Hye all but leapt away. 

“Sorry!” he said, eyes wide. “I forgot to ask! I know not everybody’s a hug person, I should’ve asked first, my bad.”

“Uh…” After the briefest of pauses, just to take in a quick breath of relief and try to make it as inconspicuous as possible, Marcy shrugged in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Not… no, I’m not really.”

A dramatic grimace twisted Hye’s face, bared his teeth. “Aw man, sorry, sorry! I’ll remember that.”

“I-It’s okay…” It wasn’t a huge deal. As long as Hye didn’t scare him like that again…

“You should call your folks, then.” Sunny manifested from behind Hye. Not even his heels could make him easier to see in the werewolf’s shadow. “If you’re gonna stay for dinner with us.”

“Oh yeah…” Marcy pounced on the change in subject. It was best for all of them if they left things there. He glanced backward toward the door, realized he wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, and jerked his attention back to the other two. “Um, do you guys have a phone?”

“Pff!” Hye giggled. “Of course we have a phone, silly. What kind of business would we be if we didn’t?”

Marcy laughed a little, stiffly, and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’d be surprised…”

It took him five minutes, but borrowing the old rotary phone in Sam’s office, Marcy called his home number and asked for his mother’s permission. Mom, as he should have expected, was ecstatic that he was “making friends” and “building a social circle”. She said it was fine, of course—which made a tiny needle of guilt settle into the back of his mind. She wouldn’t be so excited if she knew everyone who worked with him. She also asked if he needed her to come pick him up after, which he declined, more vehemently than he thought he would.

The resolution came to him in a fleeting moment of confidence. He didn’t need her to take care of him. He was almost fifteen, and they lived in one of the most boring places in Lore. He’d be fine riding his bike. As far as he knew, Ji was the only vampire for miles. There wasn’t much else he considered a threat within city limits. 

After he hung up, he went ahead and clocked out (since it was quitting time anyway) and went to leave the office, only to remember that Sam was at his desk, as usual this time of evening, and had heard the whole conversation (or… Marcy’s half of it). Marcy stammered through a brief explanation of Hye’s invite, to which Sam just nodded and said, “Cool-o-roonie! Fresh meat and fresh meat.” 

Marcy had absolutely no response for that, so he just left the room. He headed back to the diner, only to be waylaid by Hye right as he left the hallway.

“Sunny wants us to give the kitchen a once over,” Hye said. “He’s doing the last table, so.”

“I-I,” Marcy stuttered, “I just clocked out—”

“Eh,” Hye waved him off. “Don’t worry about that, there’s probably nothing. Ji’s pretty thorough. But, just in case, we should take a peek.”

It seemed he didn’t have much of a choice, since Hye didn’t even wait for a response before vaulting over the counter—right over the actual door—and shoving his way through the kitchen doors like a gunslinger entering a saloon in the movies. Marcy followed behind at a more reasonable pace, actually making use of the flip top and catching the kitchen doors on the backswing after Hye had gone through, if only to keep them from walloping him in the face. He slipped into the kitchen much more quietly, a few strides behind Hye.

The kitchen looked spotless, from what Marcy could see. It always seemed to look that way, every time he saw it. What exactly did Sunny think they would find back here? Or was it just standard procedure to check for any lingering messes?

Hye, for reasons Marcy couldn’t quite understand, had gone straight for the fridge and swung it open with dramatic flair. The gasp that followed made Marcy stop his aimless survey of the room and zero in on where Hye stood grinning into the refrigerator light. 

“Cupcakes!” he declared, thrusting his hand into the crisp, white storage space. He drew out what looked like a chocolate cupcake in pale green paper, piled high with cream cheese frosting, pink sprinkles and chocolate shavings. “Leftover cupcakes, yessssss!”

Marcy thought it was a little odd to be snacking on cupcakes when supposedly, they’d be having dinner shortly. But it wasn’t as if he could tell Hye what to do. He wasn’t Sunny.

“You want one?” Hye looked over his shoulder toward him, a flake or two of frosting stuck on his upper lip.

“Uhh…” Trying not to snicker, Marcy tapped his own lip subtly. Hye crossed his eyes down toward his nose, as if he might actually be able to see the frosting on his lip before he licked it away with much more enthusiasm than was necessary. His entire face warped with the effort and then snapped right back to neutrality. Marcy knew he’d never accomplish that level of elastic face movement. He didn’t think facial muscle whiplash was possible, but he was pretty sure he’d get it if he tried. 

It was funny to watch though, and he tried his best not to laugh. Instead, he continued. “Aren’t we about to eat dinner?” 

Hye blinked once, twice at him, as if he’d just spoken in a foreign language. His free hand eased slowly into the fridge and withdrew a second cupcake, this one wrapped in pink paper. “Are you saying you _don’t_ want a cupcake?”

Realizing it might be better to just roll with it—at this point, he really ought to just get used to that—Marcy stumbled through a resigned shrug. “Uh, no, I… Okay, uh. Sure.”

His mom would hate this decision, but she didn’t have to know.

“Smart man,” Hye said with sudden seriousness and narrowed eyes. He held out the cupcake for Marcy. 

They were very good cupcakes, soft, rich, moist, with just the right amount of crumble. The two of them munched in silence, Hye apparently too enthralled with his treat to busy his mouth with chatter. He did, however, notice something off to his right, behind the corner of the island counter where he could see and Marcy could not, right as he finished his cupcake off.

All Marcy could do was watch while he ate—how the werewolf had eaten that cupcake so quickly?—as a look of pure mischief dawned over Hye’s face. He lunged around the counter, sprinted across the room, and ducked underneath the industrial sink. Snatching something up there, Hye then sprinted all the way back across the room and skidded to a halt at the island counter. Marcy noticed the blue color of the object he’d retrieved: a jug of dish soap.

“What—?” Marcy started to ask.

Hye shushed him and barely contained a gleeful chortle. He unscrewed the cap, set said cap aside on the countertop, and turned the jug over. The soap flowed out and for one startling second, Marcy thought Hye was pouring it out over the floor for some reason, until he heard it hit water instead. Marcy stepped around the edge of the counter and found a mopping station tucked against the side. The soap cascaded from the jug into the water bucket.

Hye looked positively pleased with himself. Marcy didn’t understand.

“W…What are you doing?” he asked.

After a couple cups of the soap had been deposited in the mop water, Hye tipped the jug back and hastily put the cap back on. “Sunny always mops after Ji’s done with the kitchen.” He scuttled across the kitchen again to put the soap back. Then he zoomed over and inspected the counter here and there, possibly looking for soap residue.

“And?” Marcy glanced between him and the mop station.

“And wouldn’t it be funny if he goes to mop and instead, it just bubbles and bubbles until there’s suds everywhere?” Hye laughed to himself again, taking up the mop and carefully stirring the water, to get rid of the globs of blue that had settled at the bottom of the bucket. Those would surely give away his little scheme.

“Does dish soap even work like that?” It wasn’t like Marcy had ever tried, but he didn’t know if he’d ever seen it happen. Mom mopped with special floor cleaner, and their floors were hardwood, not tile (or linoleum?). Dish soap could suds up a sink, but could it really do that to the floor? Maybe in cartoons.

“I mean,” Hye wrung out the mop and put it back in its place, like it hadn’t been touched, “why not? It makes mountains of bubbles in a sink.”

“I guess…” Peering into the bucket, Marcy could no longer spot the soap. The water was a little bluer than it had been before, but only if you looked closely. “That’s gonna be a pain for him to clean up after, isn’t it?”

That made Hye give a brief pause. “Well… maybe.” For a moment, uncertainty flickered across his face, but it was gone just as quickly. He waved Marcy away. “All you gotta do is replace the water. And if not, then, suds disappear eventually. Quick, we should grab more cupcakes, so we look busy!”

Marcy had only just finished his first and suddenly Hye was dropping another into his hands. Just in time too; not a second after Hye shut the fridge and took a hasty bite of his second treat, the kitchen doors swung in and Sunny came through, looking focused as usual.

“Find anything?” he asked, a bit absently, as he made a beeline for the mopping station.

“Nah,” Hye answered through a mouthful of cake. “Except cupcakes. Want one?”

The werewolf had to know the elf would refuse. Marcy didn’t know either of them all that well, and even he could guess that outcome. He hadn’t seen Sunny touch anything sugary since he started working there; all he ever ate during lunch breaks were small salads.

Sure enough, Sunny flicked his gaze over the cakes in Hye’s and Marcy’s hands, frowned, and then shook his head. “No, thanks. Don’t spoil your appetites, though.”

_Mom energy,_ flitted across Marcy’s brain. He squashed the thought immediately. He was trying to get over that.

“Suit yourself,” said Hye, chomping down another mouthful, this one almost entirely frosting.

Silence fell while Sunny rolled the mopping station across the room and through the doors. They flapped shut behind him, and Hye waited a full ten seconds to move after that. He threw Marcy a quick silencing gesture, a finger to his lips, before he crept toward the doors. Not sure what else to do, Marcy fell into step behind him.

Admittedly, he was curious if dish soap really could make mountains of suds on the floor.

Hye stopped and peered through the small round window on the right door, which left Marcy to take up watch on, well, the left. Through the little windows, they could look across the service area and out over a good portion of the dining space. At the mouth of the hallway, Sunny had already gotten to work. The counter blocked the view to the floor, but they could see Sunny from the waist up, and the top half of the mop handle. 

“Wait a sec, aren’t you still on the clock?” It suddenly occurred to Marcy. Hye hadn’t even ended his shift yet.

Hye just shushed him again and munched on his cupcake.

A minute ticked by. Hye waited in silence. Not one to break such a tense quiet, Marcy did the same. He wasn’t sure how they were supposed to tell if it was working, considering they couldn’t see a thing from here. Nothing of relevance, anyway. Did Hye think Sunny would have some sort of dramatic reaction that would give it away? He knew better than Marcy, for sure; they seemed fairly comfortable around each other. Still, he had a hard time imagining anything other than exasperation as a result, if the soap worked like Hye thought it would. Then they’d both probably get an earful.

That would be more of a pain than cleaning up a bunch of suds. Man, he really should’ve thought about this beforehand and then maybe he could’ve distanced himself from this silly idea. Now he’d just look like an accomplice…

Abruptly, Sunny paused. He appeared to be staring at the ground, looking back and forth across the area Marcy assumed he’d been mopping, pink brows furrowed in thought, confusion. Ah, something had happened. Was it actually doing what Hye planned? It sucked that they couldn’t actually see anything!

Sunny’s head turned and his dark eyes fixed a glare right at them. Not a second of hesitation. Oh, he wasn’t fooled. Immediately, Marcy ducked and Hye scrambled to do the same, both washed over with a wave of dread. Marcy looked at Hye, and Hye looked at Marcy, and he could tell that both of them knew.

Whether it actually worked or not, they were in for it now.

They could hear the click of heels approach, falter briefly with a shuffle and a clatter, and then continue, drawing closer and closer. Then the doors were opening. They only got so far, with Marcy and Hye huddled directly behind them, but it was enough for Sunny to stick his head through the crack and level them both with a blank stare that said more than any words needed to.

They’d been found out, and it was hilariously easy.

To Marcy’s relief, Sunny centered his attention on Hye before he spoke. “What did you do?”

For a long, tense beat of silence, Hye just stared up at the elf and offered a cheesy grin. It reminded Marcy of his school pictures last year, all teeth and anxiety. Then the grin dropped; for a second Marcy thought he might express remorse, until he registered that Hye’s new expression was one of raw curiosity, not apology. Hye shifted his weight, leaning forward on his hands and knees and peering up at Sunny with big eyes.

“Did it work?” he asked. Before Sunny could even answer, the werewolf lunged to his feet, yanked the door open and squeezed past its guardian. He disappeared into the other room, leaving Sunny to catch the door before it hit him, and leaving Marcy to continue to huddle awkwardly in the corner, still holding a half-eaten cupcake.

Sunny glanced at him, frowning. With nothing else going for him, Marcy immediately raised his hands in surrender.

“It was his idea,” he blurted.

All he succeeded in getting was a roll of Sunny’s eyes and a shake of his head, before the elf backed out of the doorway. The doors shut behind him, and Marcy heard him snap at Hye. 

“Careful! It’s slippery now, don’t—”

“Nooo,” Hye moaned, the pout evident in every syllable, “why isn’t it bubbly?”

“That’s not how it works!”

Well, that answered that question.

Marcy bit the frosting off the remaining bit of cupcake and then compressed the cake down so he could fit it into his mouth. It seemed wrong somehow to just casually eat a cupcake after he’d essentially allowed Hye to cause trouble. He might as well try to appear as repentant as he could, and cupcakes just didn’t fit that mood. Once he tossed the paper into the trash and dusted off his fingers on his jeans, he ducked back out into the service area.

“—dries, it’ll be all sticky,” Sunny was saying, standing just outside the flip top counter and chastising Hye with a firmness that he honestly deserved this time. Marcy deserved it too, but he could definitely wait. “How much did you put in there??”

Quietly, Marcy approached his side of the flip top and peered over to try and get a good look at the place Sunny had been mopping. The mop station sat just to the side of the hallway, and he could spot a glossy sheen across the tile floor. There were a few small streaks of suds here and there, but definitely no mountains. What a waste of effort. It was almost sad.

“It wasn’t a lot,” Hye still looked more disappointed than anything, his ears tilted down. He muttered as an afterthought, “Probably not enough…”

Marcy coughed, leaning on his side of the flip top. “It was… kinda a lot…”

Hye shot him a look of utter betrayal, to which Marcy just shrugged. He was doing the best he could at this point; there was no use in making things worse by trying to brush it off. Hye’d had his fun, it hadn’t worked out. Facing the music was less trouble and less lecturing from whoever it was making the rules—Sunny, in this case.

Marcy watched as the exasperation on Sunny’s face visibly sunk into genuine discouragement. 

“Why??” was all Sunny had to say.

That was all he got to say, too. From there, everything happened so fast, Marcy had a hard time keeping up. 

A racket came a-tumbling down from the back of the shop, down the hall, as if someone or something had decided to take a dive down the stairs or something. Along with the many thuds that almost shook the walls, there was a loud shout.

“CAT! CAT!”

Sunny and Hye were immediately distracted, both tensing but seemingly hesitant to move. They exchanged looks of confusion, which they then shared with Marcy, who didn’t know any more than they did. He shrugged at them again. Which one was shouting anyway? It almost sounded like— 

From the mouth of the hallway, a dark grey blur streaked past, visible only for a blink before it was gone. The thuds came following after it until Dori appeared, running.

“Careful—!” Sunny snapped. Too late.

Dori’s sneakers slid all-too-easily on the soapy floor and he went tumbling into the cart, which rolled aside on its wheels, depositing its offender and a whole slosh of soapy mop water onto the floor. Sunny yelped. Hye sporfled and clapped a hand over his mouth. From the hallway, Sam appeared, observing the scene with wide eyes.

“What—?” was all he got out, before Dori flung a hand out to point across the diner.

“CAT!” Dori blurted again, struggling to get back up from the soap-slick floor.

“Uh oh,” Sunny said.

“Spot!” Hye yelled, sobering in the blink of an eye.

The bell jingled, signaling the opening of the front door. 

“Giuseppe, watch—” Sunny was trying his best to give the warning fast enough.

Hye swung around the counter as best he could, struggling over the results of his own prank. “Spot, no!”

At the front, Giuseppe all but shrieked. Marcy turned in time to see the shakerboarder leap to one side of the open door as the grey streak slipped under his feet, after which fright transitioned into horror on his face in the span of two seconds.

For one hot, tense second, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Marcy glanced from Giuseppe at the door, to Dori on the floor, to Sunny and Hye.

Hye let loose a loud yelp of raw distress and bolted, ignoring the skid of his shoes on soap the first few steps. Sunny followed close behind, struggling more over the soap but catching up quick afterwards despite the high heels. Hye almost bowled Giuseppe over and probably would have, had the ginger not already been to one side. The werewolf charged through the door and out into the twilight, Sundance on his tail. After glancing inside, Giuseppe darted out as well, sprinting after them. The door closed slowly and softly behind him.

Marcy blinked. 

It happened so fast…

What was he supposed to do?

As Sam helped Dori carefully off the floor, one last, slow, shuffling pair of footsteps came up the hallway. When Dori took off toward the door himself, Sam followed suit and left a confused Ji squinting at the ceiling lights behind him. 

“Did someone die?” Ji grumbled, lowering his gaze to the running pair, then to the sudsy floor and mopping station.

_Well, Giuseppe sure sounded like he was about to…_

“Spot got out!” Dori called back, reaching the door first and flinging it open. “Ji, take Marcy and go west. We’re going east. I think Hye and the others went north. Text Hye for directions!”

With a sudden drop of his stomach, Marcy found his mouth opening, only he didn’t have words yet. Even if he had, Dori and Sam were already off, into the deepening dusk, abandoning him to… 

Slowly, Marcy turned his gaze to the person he was very suddenly alone with, and found Ji sighing heavily. At least he looked about as happy about this turn of events as Marcy felt—though he doubted Ji had the same sinking sense of dread.

_Saturday all over again… No. Worse. _

“Well,” Ji said, shuffling over the soapy part of the floor, embracing the slip and slide it seemed. “Let’s go, kid, hurry up. That cat’s only gonna get further.” He slipped a mobile phone from his hoodie pocket, tugged out the small antennae at the top and flipped it open.

Cats did move fast. Marcy used to try to pet the neighborhood strays when he was little; never worked. With that in mind, and a vivid mental image of Hye’s distressed expression, Marcy hurried out from behind the counter and followed the vampire out of the shop, trying his best not to think about just what he was doing. The shadows of the night instantly swallowed them up, broken by nearby streetlamps and shop signs from the mall across the street.

The city at night. A vampire’s playground.

Marcy gulped, his heart picking up speed.

Why did he have to get stuck with Ji??

The vampire led the way, out into the parking lot, eyes on his phone as he went. Marcy followed behind, but not too close. The streetlamps cast stark beams of golden light, outlining Ji’s hunched silhouette orange. The sounds of the freeway, speeding rubber on asphalt, drifted up over an early chilly breeze—the first of the year. It was September now, wasn’t it? Not cold, not yet; but enough to juxtapose the heat of recent days. The mall added its own contributions to the night too; the marquee outside the theater flashed its yellow lights, purple and blue pulsed through the darkened windows of the club at the end of the block, and Marcy could almost hear the bass rumbling from inside the jazz club next to the outlet. 

That was the direction Ji took them, out of the plaza, staring at his phone all the while. He didn’t say a word, and Marcy was just fine with that. He wasn’t about to say anything. He didn’t know what he’d say even if he wanted to. 

Above the city lights, the clouds shifted delicately across the sky, revealing the silvery disc of the moon, half hidden in shadow. The full moon wasn’t ‘til next week.

What did moonlight do to vampires? Were they like werewolves? Legend (and some mythology enthusiasts in his class) said that moonlight made werewolves… less human. More beast than man, more apt to aggressive behavior, hungry for violence. Did Hye do that? What would happen to him then, in just a few short days, during the full moon? Would both he and Ji… lose their minds?

Marcy’s heart beat faster. Vampires weren’t werewolves. No, most considered them worse. Werewolves at least were living, breathing flesh and blood. They were alive, and their hunger stopped at a good burger and maybe a bar fight or two, or so his father said. Vampires though… Granted, all he knew was stories—hushed whispers the kids traded without their parents’ or teachers’ supervision, or shadows down spooky alleyways in horror movies. Monsters in video games. The moon always, always drew them out, made them famished. A pair of disembodied eyes in the dark, the ravenous undead, just watching, waiting to sink their fangs into fresh blood. 

Ji broke into a sprint. 

It took Marcy a full second to register his shrinking figure, sprinting off into the night, before he lunged after him, shouting, “Hey, wait!”

“Keep up,” he thought he heard Ji reply, but couldn’t be sure.

Ji ran a full two blocks, down sidewalks Marcy knew would lead them into the downtown area of Bushfort, the rows of little shops. Unlike the mall, all the windows were pitched in darkness this time of night. Only the streetlights and the one traffic light several blocks down main street would be lighting up these streets. While Marcy struggled to keep up with his escort, limping a bit to spare his bad leg, Ji stuck to the edges of the light, or as close as he could get without running into walls. Under the shadows of the eaves and awnings they dashed until the vampire took a sudden hairpin turn, down a narrow alleyway between two of the old shops. The space couldn’t be any more than four feet wide, cluttered with trash, cans and bottles, water stains from the gutters, and grass growing up between the cement slabs. The light from the nearest streetlamp barely went further than four feet past the entrance.

Marcy’s feet froze at the edge of the light. “Oh, come on…” His heartbeat pounded in his ears. He couldn’t seem to make himself go further. 

Down the dark corridor, Marcy could barely make out Ji’s figure, a blur in the shadows, growing smaller, until he suddenly stopped. It looked like a fork in the alley. When he turned around, Marcy could hardly tell, until two glowing orbs of red light blinked back at him from the dark.

A chill wracked Marcy’s spine.

“Keep moving, kid,” the vampire’s rasp echoed down the brick walls. Then the red orbs took their intense gaze away from him and in a streak of lingering light, Ji’s silhouette disappeared down the left side, around a corner. 

When he managed to suck in a breath, Marcy tried to think of the cat, remember the reason why he was here.

_Because Giuseppe got scared of a cat, that’s why. _

No. He shook his head, stepping back and away from the alley. No, he was out here to save the cat. Lots could happen to a cat, even in a small town like Bushfort. He couldn’t stop to think about the fact that this was not _his_ cat. Or consider that, if he’d just clocked out and gone home, he’d probably be heating up some nice leftovers and lounging back to finish out the campaign in Rogue Sentinel right about now. 

No, this cat needed an army of 7, including Grumpy McRed Eyes, to rescue it apparently.

Fast as a sprint could carry him, Marcy took a different route to where he knew that alley would come out, around the next corner. No way was he going to go down that alley. Not with a vampire lurking there, where it could see and he could not.

Not it. He. Right. 

He somehow reached the other side of the alley before Ji did, so he stopped there and waited, listened. He could hear Ji’s footsteps in the dark, coming closer, slower now than before. He wasn’t running anymore. He could see edges of the vampire’s face, illuminated green by what was probably his phone screen. The red of his eyes was stronger by far.

Ji had blue eyes, didn’t he? How were they glowing red?

_Moonlight…?_

“Cat redirected,” Ji’s voice came ahead of him again. “She was coming this way. I thought we could head her off.”

“Uh…” Try as he might, Marcy still felt his voice waver. He tried covering it up with a sigh, to sound tired or disappointed or something. “Okay, w-which way?”

The red eyes came closer and closer—goosebumps broke out across Marcy’s arms, his neck—until Ji reached the mouth of the alley, right as he put away his phone. With the streetlamps nearby, Marcy got his first good look at Ji’s face since they’d left.

His pupils had dilated into huge, empty black holes, leaving barely a sliver of iris around them, iris that looked the same silver blue, but seemed to glow red. 

Marcy’s heartbeat tripped over itself, and then raced even louder. He tried, in vain, to swallow it down. His feet shuffled—they really needed to move again.

Ji gestured down the street with his claws, to his right, Marcy’s left. “That way, Hye says. Orange Street.”

Marcy knew where that was. He could lead. Then he wouldn’t have to stare at Ji’s back and wonder if the vampire would try to take him down a dark alleyway again. 

He took a step. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Hold up.” 

Strong fingers gripped his arm, claws pricked against his skin. Marcy’s heart shot to his throat and he wrenched away as fast as his body could move him. He tore out of Ji’s grasp, and shuffled a full six steps backward. The pulse in his veins felt so fast, so heavy, his entire body felt hot and cold at the same time. He was on his toes—ready to run.

He didn’t take his eyes off Ji and watched as the vampire let his outstretched hand fall with a heavy exhale. Those red eyes lowered toward the ground, taking the weight of their gaze off of Marcy for a few blessed seconds.

He was still wearing his necklace. Would it work? Or had it already failed?

“Look, kid,” Ji began slowly, lifting his hand again, this time almost placating, “you don’t have to be scared of me. I’m not gonna eat you or whatever.”

Oh, Marcy knew that. That wasn’t what vampires did. 

“I-I’m not…” Marcy stammered, his voice breaking. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m not scared you’ll… you just. Surprised me.”

“Uh huh. Yeah, that’s why your heart’s beating a mile a minute,” Ji replied with great sarcasm.

Marcy looked away, anywhere, only to find himself staring down the deep, dark shadows of the alley. So he looked back at Ji. Just not at his eyes. “That’s what surprise does. Plus, we were running.”

“Nah. I can hear it.” Ji tapped his pointed ear. “You’ve been scared since we left. Just like you’re scared every time I walk into the same room.”

That meant Marcy couldn’t fake it anymore, if that was the case. It meant Ji’d known the whole time, every time Marcy tried not to be bothered. Not to think about fangs… Even now, trying to act normal, while his heart rate hadn’t even begun to slow down, not while Ji’s empty eyes were fixed on him. He couldn’t tame his breathing either. 

“Just…” Ji reemphasized his hand, palm down. “Calm down.”

“We…” Marcy fidgeted, risked a glance over his shoulder, then looked right back at Ji. All he’d need was a second… “We should find the cat.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s gotten out before.” Slowly, Ji tucked his hands, his phone, back into his hoodie pocket and kept them there. “Let’s take a breather.”

No, no, Marcy didn’t need a breather. He didn’t want a breather. He just wanted to get this whole thing over with. He wanted to go back into a well-lit building, where he couldn’t see Ji’s eyes glowing crimson, like blood. And he certainly didn’t need to think about blood, his blood, and what Ji might do about his loud heartbeat and the big, bright moon up above. 

Silence swallowed them up, nothing but crickets and the breeze and Marcy’s pulse in his eardrums. After thirty seconds, that pulse started to slow, if only a little bit. Ji didn’t move any more than to glance at his phone, then up at the shop windows, the trees across the street. Marcy followed his gaze, absently, spotted the street sign just behind Ji’s shoulder—they were on Hundred and Eighth Avenue. Two more blocks, and they would’ve been outside the police station.

Just when Marcy opened his mouth to say he was ready to go now, get this done with, Ji spoke up again.

“Sorry,” the vampire said, carefully, mumbling again. “I was kinda… short.”

For a beat, Marcy looked him over from head to toe and noticed, somehow for the first time, that Ji was indeed short. Shorter than him by several centimeters, shorter than Sunny when you counted the heels. 

“The other day,” Ji explained further. “In the kitchen. I was… I could hear your heart drumming super loud and it just…”

He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, instead shaking his head and stalking in Marcy’s direction. Marcy jumped aside and Ji passed him by, heading down the avenue. 

The words still made Marcy’s stomach twist. His settling heartbeat threatened to pick up again. 

“Like that.” Ji glanced over his shoulder. “Just did it again.”

It dawned on Marcy very slowly, but as it did, a bit of the chill died away and was instead replaced with a sinking feeling in his stomach. 

It was just like he’d heard. 

Just like he’d thought, all the way back on that first day. Young blood. A cursed hunger… It must be the heartbeat and the moon. Ji was hungry, and Marcy just being here was a big problem for both of them.

He wasn’t sure what to say. Did he have to say anything? Could he say anything without his voice cracking again, that was the real question. All of the terror from a minute ago had vanished away, blown away with the hot air that ushered in pure embarrassment. Or was it shame? Maybe keeping up the conversation would just make it worse. All along, the last thing Marcy ever wanted was to be an inconvenience and it turned out he may have been one this whole time. He’d wondered. 

Why Dori and Sam stuck them together, Marcy couldn’t even begin to understand. It was the worst idea. 

More people needed to think about the young blood thing. It wasn’t fair otherwise.

“So…” Marcy found himself saying, quietly, “you can… hear me? All the time?”

“Yep,” said Ji brusquely, without glancing back. “It’s annoying.”

Marcy frowned, tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat. “S-Sorry…”

“Tch.” This time, Ji looked back over his shoulder. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I dunno…” Marcy shrugged compulsively. “I guess I just… don’t wanna be a… I dunno, a temptation, or anything.” 

As soon as he said it, it sounded terrible and he instantly regretted it. The words had seemed appropriate in his head, but now they were out, in the air between them. ‘Temptation’?? Why had he picked _that_ word? That made it sound… wrong. All wrong. The pulse grew louder in his ears again, this time with a wave of heat. 

Unfortunately, Ji seemed to notice how weird he’d made it sound too. The vampire stopped in his tracks and turned around; Marcy almost ran into him, noticing the halt a second too late, caught only by the hand Ji raised—probably not to stop him, probably just to gesture instead, but Ji pushed him to a stop anyways. His eyebrows were furrowed, but not deeply; one arched slightly upward, questioning.

“Wait, wait a second.” Ji paused until Marcy caught his balance again, put an appropriate amount of distance between them. The vampire eyed him, brows crooked and lip curled, gaze dubious. “What… _exactly_ did you think I meant?”

Oh boy, no, Marcy didn’t like that expression one bit. Ji had the same exact thought in response to his words as he did. Marcy had made it sound weird and creepy and now he was paying for it. “I-I meant, uh… that came out weird. I-I just, I know vampires have like, special things they need a-and you can’t help that and I feel bad, me being here is, like… uh…”

This was _not_ making things better.

Such was evident by the smirk that was tempting the corners of Ji’s mouth up, though he fought it. He gazed around aimlessly a bit, maybe to hide his amusement, before he looked back to Marcy with a mostly straight face. “You realize how you’re making it sound, right?”

Marcy sighed and hid his face behind a hand. “Yes…”

“Good. ‘Cause, uh, if you didn’t, I’d be a little… offended.”

Footsteps signaled Ji’s abrupt departure. Marcy dropped his hand and hurried after him, falling once again into step behind, this time properly chagrined. Watching Ji’s back this time, noticing it wasn’t quite as hunched over as before, Marcy only felt worse. He was just mucking this whole thing up, wasn’t he?

Maybe that’s why Ji had been so cold to him from the start. Maybe Marcy just kept saying dumb things and Ji heard them or heard about them and was rightfully mad about it…

“It doesn’t work like that, by the way,” Ji called back, looking down at his phone, then around at the buildings, which had transitioned from main street shops to neighborhood homes. Most of the windows were dark or dim. “Vampires.”

Marcy swallowed his mortification, along with his pride, and tried his best to answer evenly. “What do you mean?”

“What you said. That’s not how vampires work.” Ji plunked away at a few keys on his phone screen. “You ever go a day or two without eating? See how your stomach feels?”

“Uhh…” Marcy did his best to remember if he ever had, but to his knowledge and recollection, Mom had always been really strict about getting enough to eat, and always made sure everyone in the family had three square meals a day. “I don’t think so…”

“Huh. Lucky.” Tucking his phone back into his pocket again, Ji picked up the pace a little. “Well anyway, I get hungry just like you do. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Nothing more, nothing less? So… “You… so, what does that mean?”

Ji scoffed. “Come on kid. I know you’re ignorant, but you’re not stupid. Think about it.”

He wasn’t sure if he should be offended by that. Then again, considering everything that had just tumbled higglety-pigglety out of Marcy’s mouth, he probably didn’t have any right to be. Ji said to think about it, so he did. All the vampire had said was that he got hungry, just like Marcy did. It just sounded like an excuse though…

But was it?

“So it’s just like… normal hungry?”

At the next crosswalk, Ji jaywalked across the corner to the other side. Marcy could’ve sworn his pointed ears were twitching, rising and lowering, tilting a little this way and that. Listening?

“If you go a week without food, you’re gonna feel it,” Ji said as they continued on, deeper into the neighborhood. “A vampire’s no different. Our bodies just need different nutrients. That’s all. It’s not some kind of… uncontrollable urge.” He snickered then, as if the very idea was ludicrous. “As much as the media wants to make us out as mindless blood-sucking anarchists, we’re not.”

“That’s…” It would be easy for someone to just say that. But what about all the news reports? The live footage, brawls, murders? All the legends and stories, they had to come from somewhere. “I didn’t think… I mean, there’s a lot of stories—”

“Sorry to disappoint, then,” Ji snapped. “If you want fairytale monsters, go to the Nethers.”

“Th-That’s not what I meant.” Marcy wanted to say this right. Not being able to see Ji’s face was making it hard, though maybe seeing it would make it worse. Marcy quickened his pace a little anyway, so he could walk alongside the vampire, not behind. “I mean… Sorry. I… didn’t know.”

“Tch.” Ji eyed him sidelong, and then just shook his head. “Most humans don’t.”

“Why though?” If Ji was right, Marcy didn’t understand why reports said what they did, why his dad was so cautious of vampires, what Marcy’d learned in school about them for Pete’s sake. “I don’t get it.”

He got an incredulous squint as a response. “You serious?”

“Well… yeah.”

“What’s not to get? We’re dead. We don’t have heartbeats. We’re nocturnal. The sun literally burns our skin off. We have superpowers and we drink blood. This is like, a checklist for Things Humans Find Threatening.”

Marcy frowned. “Even the sun thing?”

“Oh yeah,” Ji snorted. “Ask the elves, the sun is the embodiment of all good things. If you can’t stand the sun, what does that make you? Evil.”

“That’s… that’s just dumb.”

The corner of Ji’s mouth curled, just a little. “See? Not stupid.”

Just ignorant, it seemed.

Why would his own parents tell him this though, if it was all wrong? How could his dad, a police officer and his mother, a paramedic, not know these things? They brushed shoulders with the other races on a daily basis; had they never talked to a vampire? No, that wasn’t possible. Dad had arrested them. Chased them. Even shot… them…

But… never talked to them?

Marcy couldn’t bring himself to believe it. His dad was a good cop. He was a good person. He was just being careful, that had to be all. Just trying to make sure his kids stayed safe. Safe from the kinds of vampires he dealt with on the job, not the vampires like Ji. The vampires Dad dealt with were violent, angry, hostile. Ji… well, Ji had two out of three. Which… was why Marcy had expected the third, the violent part.

Shame washed over him, just thinking about how scared he’d been. And for what? Why had he been so quick to assume Ji would actually hurt him?

“Aha,” Ji said beside him, coming to a stop at the edge of a driveway. “There you are.”

A very loud _meow_ answered him, from the tree on the front lawn of the house on their left. It wasn’t a big tree, but the branches were high and thick, black in the night. Marcy couldn’t even hope to spot Spot in there, but there was no mistaking the sound of a cat. Somehow, despite the fact that Marcy had completely forgotten to even look, they’d managed to find her.

“Wait, how…?” Marcy glanced around. He was looking for Hye, somewhere nearby, under the streetlamps or on the other side of the street, sprinting past the little townhouses, desperate to reach his cat; he was who Marcy assumed Ji had been communicating with, after all, and who had been giving them directions. But the wolf, the elf, and the shakerboarder were nowhere to be seen. Only empty windows and dark porches stared back at him. So then… had they just gotten lucky?

When he looked back, Ji was striding across the lawn toward the tree. Sucking in a breath, Marcy sprinted after him.

“I could hear her,” Ji said, placing a hand on the trunk and looking up, “once Hye gave me the right spot.”

“B-But how did he—”

“Kid.” Ji silenced him with a flat stare. Away from the lamp light, his eyes glowed vibrantly once again. “He’s a werewolf.”

Oh. Smell. Duh.

“Well… okay, but then how did you—” Even as Marcy spoke, Ji took a few steps back, got a small run-and-jump start, and leapt almost straight up, a whole six feet, to the first branch. Ji caught it and pulled himself up, into the shadows, where Marcy could barely make him out. “…wow. Nice.”

“I said I can hear heartbeats,” Ji said, standing up carefully atop the branch, ducked a little to avoid those over his head. “It’s not hard to hear a panicked cat. Hye can smell where she’s been, I can hear where she is. Works out nicely.”

“I… I guess.” Marcy’s thoughts trailed off as he watched Ji haul himself up to the next branch, using only his arms. Marcy knew how much it took to do a pull-up, he was more than familiar, and Ji was definitely not the type for it, so Marcy was impressed.

Then he remembered the whole “super strength” thing and was decidedly less excited.

“You know,” Ji grunted, situating himself on his branch, “how I said your heartbeat was annoying?”

“Yeah?”

“It tells me someone’s scared of me,” the vampire, hardly visible in the dark, reached across to try and shift to the next branch over, “before they even talk to me. So… that’s why. Sorry for… being. You know… an a**, on Saturday.”

Marcy certainly hadn’t expected an apology. All things considered, Ji had kinda responded accordingly. So Marcy shrugged. “That’s… that’s okay. I mean, I did worse, so…”

“Eh. At least you listened.” Marcy couldn’t even see where Ji was, now, only hear the vague place where his voice was coming from. “Doesn’t help that I’m… not all that great. With people.”

_Ohhh, that’s… Same._ Ji probably had no idea just how well Marcy understood that.

The clack of heels on pavement alerted Marcy to Sunny’s approach long before the group of three came into view. One set of footsteps, lighter and faster, came up alongside Marcy before he’d even had the chance to turn all the way around to look and see who it was. He didn’t really need to see though. The shout announced it well enough.

“SPOT!” Hye yelped. The werewolf skidded to a halt on the grass, right beside Marcy, eyes glued up into the tree.

“Shhhh!” Sunny hissed, close behind. “Do you want someone to call the police?”

“Easy,” said Giuseppe, bringing up the rear at a more casual pace, though judging by the sweat and his heavy breathing, he’d been running just as fast before. “If somebody does, we’ll just explain.”

“Do you see her?” Hye called up into the tree, fidgeting with the weight of his worry.

“I got her,” Ji answered from the dark. “She’s a little spooked, but she’s fine.”

Hye sagged back with relief, all the way to the ground, flopping onto his butt and then onto his back, spread eagle on a total stranger’s lawn. “Oh good…”

Sunny sighed, but refrained from the same dramatics. Instead, he pulled out his own phone—one of the sleek new thin ones that didn’t flip—and typed away. “I’ll text Dori.”

“Careful on the way down,” Giuseppe said, smile in his voice. “You got precious cargo.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

When Ji came into view again, he lowered himself from the branches with one arm and landed softly, confidently, on both feet at the base of the tree. He cradled the other arm close, holding the folds of his hoodie close against his body. The fabric wiggled, and the vampire’s hold tightened gently, firmly. As Hye sat up and cooed and Giuseppe laughed out loud, Marcy spotted why.

A tiny, fuzzy grey head peeked up and out at them over the zipped-up collar. Despite having just been rescued from a tree, her eyes closed themselves into crescents of contentment. And though it was hard to see, with his head tilted down, Marcy swore Ji smiled at her, watching her on his chest through the red glow of his eyes.


	7. the jury's in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks is up. Marcy has a decision to make, and he's hoping despite himself that he can make the best one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of Arc 1 is here at last! :V Whew, this chapter was harder to write than I thought it'd be... After this, it's just a brief "epilogue" of sorts, and then we get a period of casual oneshots for a while. This is a slice of life after all!

* * *

Saturday, the day of reckoning, came all too soon. It felt like one minute, Marcy sat around a little coffee table in a crowded flat filled with the smell of meatballs and the sounds of soda fizz and laughter—Hye smiling, Sam rattling off some of the corniest dad jokes Marcy had ever heard, Ji sipping coffee in the corner with the cat, Spot, in his lap—and the next… morning. Marcy must have forgotten to close his drapes before he crashed into bed the night before; the morning sun glared through between the blinds in long golden daggers, right into his face. He groaned, grimaced, rolled over and peered at his clock.

7:26a.m.

Five minutes before his alarm went off. If it went off at all. Either way didn’t matter, there’d be no missing it today, no sir. 

This time, he could take his time, go more slowly. No launching out of bed, no grabbing the nearest clean clothes, no racing through the streets and certainly no wiping out on a curb. Today was the day he’d prove it, that he could handle this job, for sure. Without a doubt. It was a day of redemption. 

He took a few moments to himself, lying in the plush cocoon of his comforter, rubbing the sleep sand from the corners of his eyes and blinking blearily at the ceiling, watching his fan spin. One breath, two breaths, and then he pulled back the blankets and swiveled up to face full awake-ness. The softness of the area rug gave a nice ‘hello’ to his toes while the air felt uncomfortably cool on his legs; the air conditioning must have been turned down too low through the night. More than that, with September well under way, soon it’d be too cold for boxers-only nights. With a light shiver, he reached for the pair of socks draped haphazardly over his shoes, crooked, just the way he’d left them after prying them off the night before. He wasn’t about to cross over the cold hardwood with bare feet this morning.

With the advantage of time, he went through his closet and pulled out things he thought actually looked nice: some washed-out jeans and a flannel shirt. In the middle of wriggling his way out of his nightshirt, the alarm clock exploded to life with a loud _SQUAWK_, followed by a rock riff blasting out at an ungodly volume. Heart shooting to his throat, he ripped the nightshirt off his head and lunged for his bedside table, groping for the right button to silence the darn thing. 

The noise must’ve alerted the rest of the house to his waking, because not three seconds after he’d managed to hit the right button to shut the alarm off, his bedroom door swung open inward, fast enough to generate a breeze to announce his mother’s arrival.

“Good morn—” she started to crow.

Marcy jumped two feet high and stumbled back against the edge of the bed, scrambling for something, anything to hide behind. His hands found the comforter and yanked it over, pulling it around himself like a cloak to drown his almost-naked self under. “MOM! KNOCK!”

Her eyebrows went up, one arched higher than the other, and she actually took the time to sigh before she eased the door back with a shake of her head. “Okay, okay…”

Even after the door clicked shut, his heart raced on for several seconds. It took him another minute to relax before he slowly let the comforter fall back onto his bed. A simmering sense of irritation mixed with relief brought blood to his face, warmed his cheeks up fast. 

What a promisingly embarrassing start to an important day. He inhaled slowly, exhaled, and then set about actually getting dressed.

Once finished, he stuffed his feet into his WoodNation boots and shuffled over to the door. Cracking it open revealed that Mom had moved on somewhere and left him to himself, which made him relax a bit more. She’d refrained from hovering—for now. 

She wasn’t hard to find though. All he had to do was follow the stomach-warming smell and tantalizing sizzle of bacon. 

He poked his head around the corner into the kitchen and spotted her at the stove, humming to herself and bobbing to her own tune while she prodded at the skillet on the front burner. If the bacon was almost done, he might have time to snag some before he left. 

“You know,” she said over the symphony of crackling grease. Was she talking to him? How could she possibly hear his footsteps over all of that noise?? “I changed your diapers. There’s nothing you’ve got that I haven’t seen before.”

Marcy’s lip curled, his nose wrinkled and he almost wanted to forego the bacon then and there. Just leave now, get to work early, just to escape those embarrassingly unnecessary words. He thanked heaven nobody else was around to hear, especially Sibyl. He’d have never heard the end of it. “Mooom, don’t…”

“What, I just don’t understand why you’re so bashful.”

“Just don’t mention it. Ever. Please.”

She held up both hands in surrender, one still clenched around the grease-slathered spatula she’d been using. “All right, I won’t.” A bit of the oil slid down the spatula head and dripped onto her hand, making her jerk her arm down with a hiss and a short ‘ouch’. She brushed it off fast, swiping her hand against her jeans before settling back into watching the bacon fry. “You headed out now then?”

Marcy shook his head, despite the fact that she wasn’t watching. “No, I was gonna… wait for some bacon first.”

“Oh, here!” She reached out and tapped a finger against a stack of plates she had sitting next to the stove. “I have some slices that are about done now that I daresay turned out _perfect_. You can take those—perfect bacon for my perfect boy.”

It took him a moment to process those words and when he did, he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to say. Why on earth would she try and turn _bacon_ into a compliment?? 

_Just… Mom being Mom, I guess._

He had to wait a minute after she removed them from their hot iron bed, but once they were cool enough to touch, he snatched up three slices and stuffed one in his mouth on his way out of the kitchen.

“Hey Marcy,” Mom’s voice trailed after him as he gathered up his backpack and stooped to actually tie his shoes before he left. “Don’t forget, I’ll be gone at the library today.”

Oh, that was right. She’d mentioned something like that over dinner Wednesday night. Something about a book sale…? “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“Your dad’s on patrol today too, so if you need anything, you might have to come get it yourself.”

Marcy resisted the impulse to roll his eyes a little; it wasn’t as if he’d never been home alone before. She didn’t need to give him a heads up about it. “I won’t need anything. What about Sibyl?”

“I’m taking her with me.”

Rest in peace, Sibyl. Spending the entire day wandering around the library with nothing to do but help Mom? He couldn’t help but be glad it wasn’t him.

“’Kay,” he said, finishing the last knot and whisking to the door to heave it open. “I’m going now. Bye.”

“Bye, honey!”

With one last cringe, Marcy shut the door behind him snugly and sprinted to his bike—still sprawled on the lawn next to the driveway. He didn’t sprint because he had to; it just felt good, a kickstart to his bloodstream before he started pedaling. The morning air cooled his cheeks, and the birdsongs brightened the morning alongside the rising sun. The contrast between today and last Saturday struck him as strangely profound. He wasn’t late, he had fresh bacon to munch on and a knee well on the mend. He could relax. Boy, was that nice.

The hum of his bike tires on the pavement, the rush of nearby traffic, it added steady white noise to the morning that he’d never noticed before. Half the time, his mornings were spent racing to school, attending cross country practice, and mulling over the homework he had to turn in that day. Saturdays were different. Usually he slept in, which of course had merit all on its own and was definitely the superior way to spend the first morning of the weekend. But this wasn’t so bad either. Granted, it was only the second time he’d done this and the first he could actually breathe through, but. All things considered, he was liking the experience so far.

And he noticed, for the first time, that he hadn’t worried about the coming work day once yet. 

Noticing that made him think of it though. Of how he needed to make a decision, talk to the boss and let him know if he wanted to take the position on full time. Er, full time part-timer… Of how he’d been so unsure yesterday and yet somehow… was a little less so now. He wasn’t sure why… but he had a good feeling about today. He could wrangle it, he just knew he could.

Without the adrenaline and the panicked need to count every second, the trip through Bushfort, to the edge of the freeway and the city limits of Honeyvale, went surprisingly fast. He breathed in the fresh morning air, waved at passing cars, and the little ice cream shop at the end of Shirley Drive came into view before he knew it. Safe and sound, no banged up knee or bundle of nerves. A new day, a new start—well, not new, per se… Everyone inside this building was sure to remember last week the moment he stepped through the door. There was no avoiding that. 

After locking up his bike, he marched up to the front door and moved to pull it open. He hesitated.

Was it… wrong? To feel this _good_ about today? Was he being arrogant? Maybe. Probably. 

For a second, he had to remind himself about what today really was. Beyond the swell of frankly unmerited confidence, the truth waited. Nothing had changed. Behind this door was the end of a trial, and potentially the start of a regular position. A steady job. A big responsibility. He hadn’t done the best during this trial; it was possible Sam wouldn’t even want him to stick around. He’d goofed off with Hye on day one, slept in on his first weekend and then when he wiped out so spectacularly, he’d inconvenienced every one of them. He couldn’t keep up that track record. If Sam did give him a chance, he’d be expected to do well, not to mention balance it along with everything else—homework, cross country, holidays. 

When he’d first stepped up to this door, he’d been determined to try and brush this job off just to make himself feel better. To ease his own nerves, act like it wasn’t a big deal. Standing here now, though, he found that he really did want to do a good job. He wanted to work here.

It was fun.

And Sam’s meatballs were really, really good. That felt important too.

Taking a deep breath, he readied himself to tug open the door. 

He hesitated again. There was a sign taped on the inside of the glass. In big, curly pink letters, it read: 

_CLOSED_

_We’ll be back!_

“Closed?” he murmured to himself, brow pinching in the middle. Why would they still be closed? He checked his watch: 8:01am. Aside from spending the last minute wasting time ruminating, he was right on time and nobody had said anything to him about not coming. Did something happen? Was everything okay?

Frown creasing lower, he gave the door a tug and found it locked. 

“Odd…” He squinted through the glass to see inside.

Not a soul occupied the dining area, the eatery empty, all the chairs still stacked on top of the tables. Well, there were no patrons at least. Marcy had anticipated that, judging by last week. What he hadn’t expected was no hide or hair of any of the guys—no Sunny, no Hye, no Dori. The diner was completely empty from front to back, every booth and table spic and span but with no sign of anybody around. Most of the lights were off too, except for the one in the hallway in the back, and the set just above the counter. What was going on? Last Saturday, at least all of the lights were on and Sunny had been the first to greet him—or, the second, including Ji.

What if… something _had_ happened?

Carefully, he picked his way around toward the back of the shop; surely, the back door was open for staff? The closer he drew to the back, the more he began to make out sharp noises coming from there—voices, and things banging, metal on metal, like pots and pans. The side door wasn’t open. Could they really be that loud? These were brick walls, for crying out loud!

He followed the sounds, past the back door and poked his head around to the very back of the building, where the noise emanated from. There, a great big white box of a truck sat parked right up against the side of the building, with the cargo door backed into a big open garage door that he’d never once noticed before. How had he missed that?? And since when did they have a company truck? Granted, he’d never seen this door open before, but he should have at least noticed that it existed. And the truck was so big and bright, even in the shadow of the building, a person would have to be blind to miss it. Maybe it was just making a delivery...?

All of the noise was radiating from the obvious chaos going down just inside the building. He glimpsed flurries of motion, arms passing things from floor to truck—the pair inside the truck box sported an assortment of tattoos. Giuseppe.

A fluffy head poked out through the minuscule space between the truck and the doorframe.

“HI!” blurted Hye, beaming wide. From what Marcy could see, the werewolf was dressed in his usual white button up and black slacks, sans the company apron. “No accidents today?”

There it was, just like he thought. Marcy withered a little bit. “Uh, no. Thankfully.”

“GrrrREAT! We don’t want any more of those,” Hye nodded slowly, pinching his chin and puckering his lips as if these were words of great wisdom that he spoke.

Sam’s voice pierced the air over their heads, making both of them flinch. “Hye, we’re not done over here!”

Hye’s ears actually drooped in chagrin, as did his smile. He let Marcy see his look of guilty resignation, shrugged, and then beckoned him with a wave of his gloved hand. “Hurry and clock in, we’re rushing this morning!”

As per the norm, Marcy’s confusion only compounded and he opened his mouth to ask “rushing where?” but by then, the werewolf was already gone. In his place, Marcy spotted Ji through the crack, carrying a large bin up to the edge of the truck.

What was going on?

Well… there was one way to find out. 

Without wasting another second, he darted back to the back door and swung inside. He plunged into a realm of chaos, a flurry of commotion. Ji, Sunny and Hye bustled back and forth between the numerous steel cupboards and counters, the massive freezer, the double ovens, scooping up and carting off bins and boxes, paper bags and pans capped in tinfoil. The cool morning air wafted through the kitchen, pricking Marcy’s face, coming in through the gaping garage door and stirring up a refreshing draft that brightened the usually stuffy kitchen. The back of the truck hung equally wide open, where Giuseppe stood inside, collecting all of the bits and bobs that the others brought him and stacking them neatly along the brushed metal shelves that lined the truck’s cargo space.

“Hey kid,” Dori greeted, in the middle of directing Sunny about something inside the box they hovered over. “Just in time. We can use the extra hands.”

Once again, Marcy’s mouth opened, questions on the tip of his tongue, but Dori went back to muttering something, instructions of some kind, to Sunny before he patted the top of the box, turned away and whisked straight out of the kitchen through the swinging doors, which _fwapp_ed shut behind him. 

Everyone else seemed just as busy if not more so; perhaps now was not the time for questions. But then, he would need an explanation from _someone_! How was he supposed to help if he didn’t understand what was going on? 

Perhaps… Sam was the best person to ask. And Marcy had to talk to Sam anyway, about keeping the job, right? Might as well go straight to the source.

The source who sounded rather… irritated, this morning.

It reminded him of his first day, actually. Funny how that worked out.

Marcy kicked himself into gear, crossing into the open, straight into the line of fire, just in time to accidentally cut Ji off from the truck.

“Ah, sorry!” Marcy stepped to the side to let him pass.

The vampire smirked ever so slightly before moving on, carrying what looked like a humongous electrical cooker to load up into the truck bed. His face looked surprisingly… Well, Marcy couldn’t put his finger on it. He had more color in his cheeks, less shadow under his eyes. He looked a little more… alive. Was Marcy just imagining things?

Moving with quiet intent, he made quick work of clocking in at the time station by the door before he did anything else. He took his card from the slot, punched it, and tucked it neatly back into place.

“Be careful with those cupcakes,” Sam’s voice crowed out over the din of busyness and Marcy’s attention swept to the opposite end of the room, where the boss stood at the giant industrial sink at the back, rinsing something with the pull-down faucet nozzle. “I don’t want to lose _any_ more!”

Marcy cleared his throat and announced his presence. “Good morning, Mr. Hambleton.” 

The man at the sink glanced over his shoulder in his direction. “Oh, hey kid. No broken bones today?”

Two for two. He was positive everybody would mention last Saturday at least once today. With his best attempt at a smile, Marcy laughed it off with as much confidence as he could fake. “Yeah, nope. Not today.”

“Nice.” Sam, who appeared to be rinsing his hands, shut off the water and dried his palms on his apron, which was checkered pink and red and said ‘Kiss the Cook’ on the front. Which reminded Marcy: did he need to get his own apron from the office? Why wasn’t Hye wearing his—or any of the others, for that matter? And what was happening, what were they all rushing around for? He hadn’t the slightest clue. Nobody was explaining anything yet. “Probably for the best. Not sure we could juggle a casualty today. Hey, come ‘ere, help me for a minute.”

Wait, help Sam? _Help him?_ With what, cooking? Marcy was no cook, for sure. There was a reason why he was glad to catch some of Mom’s bacon; had it been up to him, he probably would’ve just grabbed a slice of bread and been done with it. Cooking? He knew less about that than he did the reasons for the rush this morning. But when Sam moved back toward the island counter, Marcy had no choice but to meet him there, and noticed for the first time on his way, the sheer volume of _stuff_ arrayed over the brushed metal surfaces. One island counter was stacked high with bins and bags, slowly being cleared by the other guys; the other island had a set of trays laid out. One had half a dozen chocolate cupcakes lined over it, wrapped in pink and mint paper cups and bare on the crests. The other platter was empty, save a sturdy sack of sprinkles in technicolor. 

“I’m gonna frost these really fast, then I need you to throw some jimmies over them,” Sam explained, hefting up a giant funnel bag, filled with what could only be cream cheese frosting, kept at bay only by a tiny star tip and a lack of pressure.

Just sprinkling. If it wasn’t like the Sprinkle Stack, he could handle that. He nodded and slipped around behind the boss to take up his station at the empty platter, moving the bag off to the side and cracking the top open to peek inside. So many sprinkles…

“Jimmies?” he asked, looking up in time to be mesmerized by the first swirl of frosting Sam slathered over one of the cupcakes. 

Sam didn’t look up, focus solely on the task at hand, hands steady and swift. No shaking, no hesitating. “Yeah. Isn’t it more fun than ‘sprinkles’?”

“If you say so…”

After a satisfying spiral and a quick flick of his wrists, Sam finished off the first cake with a lovely little peak and moved over to the next one. “Kay, we need just a light rain of color, stat. We need to get these to join their older siblings.”

Marcy carefully relocated the cupcake to the platter in front of him. He found a scoop nestled just inside the bag of sprinkles, which he plucked out with care and hovered over the pristine white frosting twirl. A light rain? Seemed simple enough. He just needed to be gentle was all. A little wobble of his hand, a shake of the scoop and—viola! A smattering of sprinkles tumbled over cream cheese ridges and stuck like rainbow freckles. Cute.

_Did I just call a cupcake cute?_

It seemed a little familiar though. Almost like… “Hey, these look like the cupcakes that were in the fridge last night.”

Sam nodded—Marcy did a double take at his hands, which were already swirling frosting onto the fourth cake. “Yep. We’re taking them to a fundraiser today. We’re catering—oh, wait, I forgot to mention that yesterday! D*** it.” For a second, the man’s rhythm broke, his hands and the frosting funnel hovering over the fifth morsel. He frowned, closed his eyes, shook his head to himself. “Sorry. I was gonna give you a heads up beforehand.”

Oh, so that was what was going on. These cupcakes were—oh._ Oh._ Wait a minute… those were the cupcakes he and Hye ate last night. Three of them. Hye had called them leftovers, but_ they weren’t leftovers._

Did that mean… these were the replacements? Late, last minute replacements. And the reason why Sam seemed more clipped than usual. Oh man… He hadn’t been here five minutes and he was already messing things up. Marcy knew he shouldn’t have been so cocky this morning. He had no reason to feel so good about today, not when he needed to make up for the absolute train wreck he’d made of his trial period and convince not only himself, but everybody else that maybe he could be a good employee to keep on. 

_Nope, nope, don’t think about it, stop it. You were feeling so good!_ It wasn’t the confidence that was the problem; he just couldn’t be careless. The good feeling was good. It had to be, right? He could use it. He’d need to cling to those coattails, grin and bear it as much as possible. That way, he’d be sure not to slack off, hurt himself, cause accidents or eat things he shouldn’t. No more making mistakes that someone else had to pay for. 

Sam hadn’t said anything about it, either. Did he not know that Marcy ate one? Or, what if he did know and that’s why he was having Marcy help with them this morning?

Okay, he really needed to do a good job with these. 

“Th-That’s okay.” Marcy snagged the next two cupcakes and took great care in dusting sprinkles over top of them. “I didn’t know we catered.”

A sudden sputter across the kitchen made him raise his head, toward the open garage door, where Hye was handing Giuseppe what looked like a big pink beverage cooler. The werewolf was watching them over his shoulder though, looking aghast with his mouth hanging open.

“I literally mentioned it yesterday! Were you not listening?” A smile played at the corners of Hye’s mouth.

Marcy blinked slowly. That must have been just another thing he’d missed. But Hye was just trying to lighten the mood. Could he joke back? Was that allowed? He shrugged. “I can’t remember.”

Withering, Hye clutched dramatically at his chest. “I’m hurt! I thought we were friends!”

“Friends don’t always listen to each other.”

That made Hye laugh out loud, which surprised him. The sound of it bouncing off the cinder-block walls made Marcy want to smile back. He felt a little lighter then. _At least Giuseppe’s advice works._

“Okay kid, finish those up and then stick them in that tub over there.” Sam reach over across Marcy’s line of sight, just to make sure Marcy saw where he was indicating—the other island counter, where a rectangular Rubberware tub sat out and waiting, the lid propped against the side. Then Sam whisked away, rounding the opposite side of their island and fiddling with the ties of his apron behind him as he went, heading for the kitchen doors. “We’ve got ten minutes ‘til lift-off, people! Less than an hour for set-up.”

They seemed to be doing okay for ten ‘til, if these cupcakes were all they needed to finish before they left. Marcy threw sprinkles over the last few, watching the color rain down on each one until they were satisfactory, before he gingerly lifted the platter and carted them over to the transport tub. 

“We’re doing pretty good, all things considered,” Giuseppe echoed Marcy’s thoughts from the back of the truck, leaning over to take the orange plastic tumbler Ji handed up to him. What looked like cola darkened the inside. Giuseppe swirled the ice around with a crisp rattle and then gave it a loud slurp. Ji smacked his kneecap with the heel of his palm, which almost made the shakerboarder spit the drink back out. He managed to contain it to a snort, doubling over fighting both a grin and a grimace. “Gaah, it’s in my nose! Dude, why—?”

Ji didn’t bother responding and simply shuffled away, toward the door without a word. Marcy thought maybe he saw a smirk on his face though.

He really did look more alive than usual.

“Hey, Ji,” Marcy found himself blurting.

The vampire stopped and looked at him. No more furrow in his brow. “Hm?”

“Uh…” Frankly, Marcy hadn’t meant to say anything out loud. But now that he had, there was no taking it back. He gestured to his own face. “You… the dark circles—” _No, you don’t just point that kind of thing out, you clunker!_ That was rude, he knew it was; why did he say anything at all?

But Ji’s smirk just widened, betraying nothing but amusement to Marcy’s relief, and answered as he turned toward the kitchen doors. “Just a bit of magic, kid.” And then out he went as well.

Just a bit of… _Wait. Wait, does that mean…?_ What did that mean?

Vampires couldn’t do magic. It was illegal. As far as Marcy knew from school, most had never even learned how. There was no way Ji could mean he himself had applied a bit of magic as casually as Mom put on her makeup every morning.

But then, last night had proved what Marcy knew about vampires. Nothing, that’s what. 

He didn’t have to know how Ji did it. The fact that Ji looked alive today, and the fact that he’d almost smiled? That should be more important.

The cupcakes were done. Marcy stared at them a second longer than he needed to—cute little cupcakes, in two rows of three, ready to be sealed and passed to Giuseppe in the truck. Look at that… he did a good job.

“Ready?” 

Marcy lifted his head to find both Sundance and Hye parked on the opposite side of the island across from him. Sunny pulled his own company apron on over his head. He had a second one clenched in one hand as he did so.

Marcy nodded a little. “I think so,” he muttered, voice cracking halfway through, because of course it would. Not even clearing his throat afterward could distract from that.

In response, Hye puffed up and raised a fist toward the ceiling. “Not think! You gotta _know_! Mister Marceline Ross, _are you READY_!?”

He sounded like a coach. That was the most familiar thing Hye had ever said to him and it almost made Marcy crack a grin. He fought it out of habit. “Yes, sir.” It wasn’t the most enthusiastic response in the world, and it certainly lacked the oomph of what he would’ve said to his actual coach, but. His voice didn’t waver so much this time. 

“Sorry. He watched a football drama last night.” Sunny smiled, and held the second apron out in gesture before setting it on the counter. When he set it down, what Marcy thought was one turned into two. “Suit up time!”

“Suit up?” Marcy repeated, locking the lid over the cupcakes while Hye lunged for his apron. He eyed the one left; was that… his? “Are we like, superheroes?”

Hye popped his head through the apron loop and struck a pose with his fist to the sky. “YES! We are the Sweetie Boys!”

Marcy cringed almost as hard as he had at his mother that morning and hastily snagged the last apron. He looped it over his shaking head, before he scooped up the Rubberware and marched it over toward the truck. “Oh, no, that’s… no.”

“How about…” Giuseppe came to meet him, carefully taking the tub from his hands when he offered it. “The Cupcake Crusaders?”

Both Marcy and Sunny groaned in unison this time.

“OH OH,” Hye bounced on his toes, “how about… the Screams.” He punctuated the word with a mysterious wave of his arms and a crooked arch of his eyebrows. 

“…Why?” Marcy asked with a frown.

At the same time that Hye grinned his wolfish grin, Sunny slowly started to smile as well, as if realization was dawning on him, and the two shared a knowing look as Hye began to explain. “Because I scream—”

“You scream,” Sunny added.

“We all scream!” Hye trumpeted and then, all at once, the three of them finished with a loud, victorious, “FOR ICE CREAM!”

And Marcy just buried his face in his hands, trying his best not to laugh, because that was one of the dumbest things he’d seen happen in a long time and for once, it wasn’t something he did.

He kinda enjoyed it.

* * *

The trip to wherever the event was taking place took less than five minutes, but the smells wafting through that truck were so savory, it felt like ages. In the end, they didn’t go very far, so Marcy only had to suffer for a little while. He concluded this event must be some sort of local thing, and briefly wondered if anybody he knew would be there. It would be cool if there was. Or would it?

Wait, no, if there was, that could be embarrassing…

The last thing he needed was for his friends at work to hear about him from other people who knew him.

After the truck stopped, Sunny and Hye—who’d ridden the whole way in the cargo space, along with Marcy and Ji—immediately started gathering up bins to unload, even before the cargo doors opened out. At the same time they did and Sam appeared in a patch of shade along the edge of a parking lot, the door between the cab and the cargo space swung open and Giuseppe stuck his head in.

“Hey Ji, hand me my apron,” he said, pointing off to the side of the floor, in the corner behind one of the shelves. “We got a straight shot of shade for you this time.”

With a sigh, Ji reached to snatch the apron up from the corner and tossed it to the ginger. “That’s something, I guess.”

Oh, that was right. Ji couldn’t go in sunlight. Marcy wasn’t sure if that meant any sunlight at all, or just direct, but considering they’d planned a path of shade for him, he assumed it was the latter. Which was good to know; after yesterday, there was no avoiding the fact that he knew very little about vampires at all. He really needed to learn. No, he _wanted_ to learn.

Picking up a bin for himself, Marcy followed on the heels of his fellow waiters and hopped down from the truck, taking in their surroundings. They’d parked on the inside end of a small parking lot, in the morning shade of a big brick building that seemed vaguely familiar. Large, inset windows lined the side, trimmed with stained glass and flaking white wooden panes. His first thought was a church, but it wasn’t any local church he’d ever seen. And the stained glass didn’t have any illustrations in them, just flower patterns. 

He’d probably recognize the front if he saw it. However, Sunny and Hye led the way in the opposite direction, around to the back, following the patch of grass between the parking lot and the building’s edge until it opened up into a backyard brimming with activity. Several folding tables had been set up in a line to the left, just in front of two little oak trees; another was tucked near the back of the building, in the shade, with a white tent set up around it. Marcy guessed that would be where they put Ji. Further in the open, a handful of ladies hurried about, spreading little white table clothes over a small smattering of picnic tables, or nestling little jars filled with sunflowers, daisies and some kind of purple flower. To his immediate chagrin, he recognized several of the ladies as teachers from school. He didn’t see Mrs. Perch, but he could make out Miss Yvonne from Lab, Ms. Turner from Algebra, and Ms. Ramos the school nurse. 

A dark-skinned lady he didn’t recognize descended down the steps from the back door as they neared the line of folding tables. When she reached ground level, she stood a whole head taller than both Marcy and Hye, and literally towered over Sunny. Marcy had certainly never seen such a tall lady around before; he would’ve remembered. Her ridiculously tall block heels clopped on the sidewalk, adding class to her approach, and her face split in a broad smile at the sight of them all.

“Hey boys!” she said, spreading her arms in welcome. Then she threw one out toward the tables. “We’ve got you a place ready to go; if you need anything, just holler.”

So, this must have been the lady in charge. The one who hired them.

Marcy kept his head low and followed along in the line that he and the other two had fallen into, hoping none of his teachers would notice him—not yet. Behind them, he heard the tall lady gasp with delight.

“Sammyyyy, you have staff now!”

“Hi, Betty.” 

He couldn’t help it; Marcy glanced over his shoulder, just to see. The lady—Betty—enveloped Sam in a tight, vigorous hug, which the boss seemed to take in stride. When she released him, she stayed close, patting Sam’s shoulders with her wide smile broadcasting a raw, genuine happiness to the world. 

“I’m so proud of you,” she beamed. “How’re things goin’?”

Ah, so she knew him.

“Marcy!”

Jumping on the spot, Marcy jerked his attention around to Sunny, who was staring at him with raised pink eyebrows. 

“You with us?” the elf asked.

“Yes!” Marcy blurted and hurried to catch up with them at the tables. 

The bins they’d grabbed had tubs of food stacked inside, which puffed out clouds of the most delicious-smelling air—the same smell from this morning at home, good ol’ bacon. Marcy’s mouth watered just reaching in, and he could tell Hye was equally enticed by the way the werewolf’s nose twitched and hovered over the top of the open bin. Before he got the chance to see what smelled so good though, Dori caught them and banished them to the truck, dismissing them to do more heavy lifting while he unpacked the bins. 

Sunny took one of two large electric cookers, hefting it without trouble on his own despite it being basically half his size, while Giuseppe roped Hye and Marcy into hauling two miniature freezers, full and heavy with ice cream. Ji hovered in the back, probably to be the last one to leave the truck, tying on his own apron.

“These are the heaviest things though,” Hye moaned as he took one end of the first freezer and tipped it carefully out of the back of the truck, pushing it halfway off the edge and then pausing so Marcy could hop down to grab hold of it there. “Why can’t Ji and Sunny do it?”

Giuseppe raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Sunny took one of the heavier things. And we don’t want any accidental burns today.”

Hye just sagged and moped. Meanwhile, Marcy adjusted his grip on the freezer, pulled it gingerly out of the truck, and settled back with the whole thing in his arms. It was pretty heavy, but all things considered, not bad at all. It wasn’t much bigger than a large microwave; he could probably wrap his arms around it if he wanted to. He shifted his weight a little bit, finding the best, most stable point of balance. “I got this one, guys.”

“Whoa, you sure?” Hye eyed him like he might tip over any second.

“Yeah, I got it. Let’s go.”

Once again, a troop of them left the truck along the shadows of their host building, Giuseppe and Hye in the lead, both carrying one freezer, Marcy behind them and Ji bringing up the rear.

Giuseppe led them straight for the little white tent as quickly as his feet could take them, ducking inside and squeezing his way between the flap and the table set up inside. Without thinking too much about it, Marcy stepped in right behind them, only to realize there was a whole lot less room in here than he thought. The front of his freezer brushed up against Hye’s back where the werewolf had stopped.

“Ji, where do you want these?” Giuseppe asked, stalled at the front.

Ji, who edged in just behind Marcy, spoke over their heads in reply. “Uh… just under the table, I guess.”

A bit of an interlude ensued, the two in front trying to figure out the best way to maneuver the freezer—long ways or side ways. Giuseppe stepped to one side, advocating for sideways, and Hye, arguing for long ways, took a step back—right into Marcy. Marcy wobbled a little, but couldn’t step back; Ji was there. He shuffled to his left instead, just a few centimeters, aiming to squeeze up against the table as much as he could. Instead, he underestimated the distance and knocked his thigh right into the table edge. The cheap, lightweight thing tipped forward out of the tent. Marcy’s heart jumped to his throat.

For the briefest of seconds, the table’s fall hiccuped, like something had snagged it. An odd sizzling sound and a hiss came from over Marcy’s shoulder, then the table fell the rest of the way out of the shadow of the tent and into the morning sun, and clattered onto the sidewalk in front of it with a mighty racket. 

“Sorry!” Marcy blurted, to no one in particular. He glanced over his shoulder toward Ji. “Sor—”

But Ji was hunched over, slinking toward the back of the tent with his left arm curled close to his body, his other hand tightly gripped around the wrist. Teeth bared, eyes narrow slivers, the vampire sucked in a sharp breath and let it out slowly through his teeth. He was shaking. The hand he held… the skin of his fingers was an angry, rippling red. Smoking. Burned. 

“Ji, you okay?” Giuseppe hastily lowered the freezer and thankfully, Hye didn’t object this time.

The vampire nodded hastily, despite the agonized twist in his face. “Yeah, yeah, fine,” he grunted.

Marcy couldn’t take his eyes from those burns. They looked horrible, painful, glistening pink from knuckle to fingertip. Sunlight burns. Had Ji… tried to catch the table?

He must have. One clumsy move, and Marcy had messed up, again. Mistake number two, and Ji was the one paying for it.

“I-I’m sorry,” he repeated, all but dropping his freezer next to the other one so he could face Ji without it. “I didn’t see it—”

Ji shook his head emphatically to silence him. Marcy snapped his mouth shut. The tent fell into a tense handful of seconds, during which Ji simply breathed, in and out, evenly, deliberately. He kept his wrist gripped tightly in his other hand, as if the pressure could ease the injury in some way. Marcy may have never been burned, not to this degree, but he knew that impulse. Despite what he said, Ji was in a lot of pain. All because Marcy couldn’t avoid bumbling into a simple table.

He was slipping. He really, really needed to keep his head in the game. He couldn’t keep doing this.

Then, before Marcy’s eyes, the burns on Ji’s hand drained of their color. The inflamed skin paled, lost its pucker, and pulled itself smooth until there wasn’t a single sign it had even been damaged. Smooth knuckles, corpse-white skin, just like it was a minute ago. With another long, slow breath, Ji waited one more moment before stretching his fingers, out and in, closing them into a fist, finally dropping his arm to his side.

“See?” he said, staring down. “Fine.”

Gone. The burn was gone, just like that. Not a hair out of place. 

That’s right. Vampires could heal. They walked away from shoot-outs without a single scratch. In the rush of the moment, when Ji had been in pain, Marcy had completely forgotten about the power of vampire regeneration. Except… that was just it wasn’t it? Ji had still been in pain. A lot of it, for it to show so clearly on his face. What did it matter if it healed really fast? Marcy had never thought about it before, never had to, but no amount of recovery speed could erase how much something hurt.

So he hung his head. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been more careful.”

Though, technically, Hye had backed into him… No, no, this was Marcy’s responsibility. He could have watched where he stepped.

“Would you quit it?” Ji scowled fiercely at them all. “I said I’m fine. Come on, we have stuff to get set up. Giuseppe, give ‘em something to do.”

Maybe he just didn’t want them fussing over him—which Marcy could understand—but a part of him didn’t think it should be as simple as that. From the look on his face, Giuseppe didn’t either, but the ginger nodded anyway, gave a small salute of his fingers, and then beckoned Marcy and a strangely silent Hye to follow him out of the tent and into the sun.

That sight of Ji’s fingers healing themselves ran over and over in Marcy’s mind as they set about getting all of the food set up and ready. He paid attention as best as he could, following whatever directions he was given. The big cookers from the truck, which Sunny had handled by himself, were filled to the brim with steaming hot fried chicken and needed to be plugged into the nearest extension cord. They also had two tubs of cold pasta salad to put out, two dozen miniature cream pies drizzled in chocolate and three dozen of the sprinkled cupcakes totaled between the old and new ones. Betty, who was indeed the lady who hired them and in fact the librarian (it was the library, not a church), brought them a box of last minute decorations to add to the little cakes: sticks with paper books stuck to the top that said “go on an adventure today” on the two-dimensional pages. He, Sunny and Hye kept their hands busy carefully inserting each stick into the fluffy white frosting. 

When Marcy asked about them, Sam explained that this was all for a book fair.

“They have one every year to raise money for elementary kids’ camp,” Sam said, stirring the pasta salad a bit before taking a napkin to the rim of the big glass bowl holding it, wiping off any messy streaks of mayonnaise with a deft spin of the dish. 

While Marcy nodded slowly in understanding, the explanation caught on his mind like a fish hook and stuck there. It sounded slightly familiar. Why was that? For the life of him, he couldn’t pin down what—

“Marcy!!” someone called loudly behind him.

His mom’s voice.

_The library. Ohhh, a fundraiser, at the library! _

Oh no.

“Heeyyyyy!” Mom said, having the decency to whisper-yell this time as she came up beside him and threw her arms carefully around him in a half hug. She sounded so delighted, he almost felt bad for the way he immediately wished her away. At least she noticed that his hands were busy and didn’t jostle him too much. Still, he let go of the stick quickly and moved his hands far away from the cupcakes; he wasn’t taking any chances. _Please let go, please let go_. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here. Hey fellas! I’m his mom.”

Oh, Marcy could just die. Where was Sibyl?? She was supposed to be here with her, right? He didn’t want to be alone in this.

He was starting to get the foreboding feeling that today wasn’t going to go very well. First the cupcakes, then Ji, now his mom? Today was the day he needed to prove to Sam that he could handle this job and actually do it well! Why did the world seem so intent on making everything so difficult?

The guys all chimed in their polite greetings, Hye’s being the most emphatic, of course. At least they took the intrusion in stride. It did little for Marcy however; all he could do was wait until she freed him to go do… whatever she was here to do. Help sell books or something. 

“I was so proud of him, getting ready so early this morning,” she continued, giving Marcy’s shoulders a squeeze. “Big change from last week, huh?”

Marcy could barely restrain the grimace that itched to contort his features. He wanted so badly to just hide. Unfortunately, the only convenient hiding place was under the tables and that was rather conspicuous. The truck would’ve been ideal, but it was too far away and there was nothing left to unload as an excuse. So instead, he had to settle for taking a quick breath and schooling his face into something closer to neutral.

“Mom, we’ve got, uh… a lot of stuff to get ready, so—”

“Oh, of course!” She gave him a grin that stretched her cheeks and squinted her eyes, letting him go just to poke his nose before she left. “My worker bee. Good luck! Love you!”

Thank everything, she went away after that. Marcy didn’t watch her go. Instead, he snatched up the nearest cupcake stick and went right back to work. He needed to stay focused.

“Aww,” Hye cooed across the table. “She’s nice! I love her outfit.”

Outfit? Marcy hadn’t even noticed what she was wearing. Probably just another set of capris and a baggy tee; not much to love. “Uh huh,” he muttered absently, only for it to occur to him afterward that what Hye said didn’t really require a response. Oh well. Once again, he’d opened his mouth without thinking.

Straightaway, shame at his behavior started to simmer in his gut. He was letting too much show; they didn’t need to see how he felt about this. He was being petty and childish; today was a day of maturity. He just needed to do his job and be professional and smile when necessary. To be the best host (assistant host?) he could be. Even when his mom embarrassed him in front of her friends, which he was 70% sure was probably going to happen. It always did. She liked to brag about him for some reason, and it always made the other adults look at him in this weird way. Like they were expecting something from him. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t think his mom was nice. If ‘nice’ meant ‘good’ or ‘kind’, that was true enough. She was probably the nicest person he knew. Which… just made him feel worse about the irritation stewing in his chest. He slapped a mental lid on it and made a promise to himself that he would ignore it. 

At the same time, Sam stepped between Hye and Sunny and waved a hand between them and Marcy, gaining their attention. “Okay men. People are starting to show up. The official event starts in five minutes. Dori and I are handling the food, Giuseppe’s got the coolers; what I need the three of you to do is keep everything running smoothly. You guys pick up plates, cups, napkins, whatever; you see if anybody needs anything, make conversation, all that jazz. Keep the space pleasant and _clean_. Be the best waitrons on the planet.”

Marcy raised his eyebrows. Everything sounded fine until the last part. The _best_? That was a tall order. And given his track record… With his luck, he’d drop someone’s drink or call someone the wrong name. Or knock over another table. And his mom was here now. She wouldn’t even be embarrassed and would probably worry that he’d hurt himself instead. Somehow, that felt worse. 

Which, he supposed, was good reason to make sure that didn’t happen. 

Both Hye and Sunny nodded in agreement to Sam’s charge, in any case. Either they were confident or they didn’t take Sam seriously. Knowing Sunny, probably the former. Knowing Hye, could be the latter. Either way, they would make up for Marcy’s lack of experience. 

“Aye aye, captain!” Hye puffed out his chest with a scowl of mock seriousness. Unamused, Sam put a hand on the werewolf’s head and shoved it around a little, causing Hye to break character and laugh, before he moved down the tables to where Dori stood by the chicken. 

“We should make this fun,” said Hye between the three of them, while Marcy and Sunny set the last of the book decorations and gave the cupcakes a once over, making sure each one was straight as it could be. “We could make it a game, and there could be a prize for the person who works the hardest!”

As usual, Sunny disapproved with a shake of his pink head. “We’re not here to play games, Hye.”

“No, but see, if the game is to focus on work, then it’s not a distraction!” When the big eyes Hye gave the elf didn’t seem to work, Hye turned them onto Marcy and clasped his gloved hands together. “Please, please? We gotta do _something_ to make things interesting.”

They really didn’t. But then again, if they didn’t come up with something themselves, would that make it more likely for Hye to get distracted by other things? Like trivial conversations, or any kids that happened to show up? Hye liked to have long conversations with patrons at the shop on a normal day; the energy of an event could be disastrous. That could cause problems again, if Marcy ended up following him around. He could always follow Sunny, but…

Maybe they did need something. Something to make it fun. But what? Dessert wouldn’t make a good prize; they worked at an ice cream shop for goodness’ sake. They were probably so used to living and breathing sugar, it didn’t feel like a treat anymore. They needed something different. 

Marcy didn’t have anything on him but his apron. He didn’t have much money—or at least, nothing he’d want to use up in the event he lost. Which if he was honest with himself, was likely. These guys had several months’ worth of advantage over him. That meant he needed to consider very carefully any ideas for prizes that he came up with; it couldn’t be something he wanted that badly. 

What did they have? He scanned his attention across the backyard, where more adults and a handful of kids had already arrived and milled about, chatting, laughing, disappearing into the library building. Books were useless here; who wanted a book as a prize for a game? Some of the kids hovered near the ice cream tent, ogling the spread Ji had out: assorted waffle cones in vanilla and strawberry, and of course, the freezers, one stocked with frozen goodies like fudge-pops and ice cream sandwiches and the other lined with three flavors of ice cream. Nothing exciting there either, unless you counted the constant risk that Ji could accidentally burn himself again. 

And beyond the library property, he wasn’t as familiar with the area. There wasn’t anything cool here or nearby, as far as he knew. They were in the thick of Honeyvale and all of the good stuff was over near the freeway. 

That sucked. Marcy frowned in a vague direction, at nothing in particular. So much for fun.

“People are sitting down,” Sunny muttered. “We should see if they need anything.”

“This is a buffet,” Hye mused, gesturing to one side of the tables to Dori and Sam by the chicken, and then down the other side where Giuseppe was already handing one elderly lady a glass of what looked like iced tea from one of the beverage coolers. “They’ll come get stuff when they need it.”

“Well, we’re supposed to make it easier for them.”

Marcy stared at the coolers they’d brought. Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen pink ones before. The ones they used at sports games were always blue or red…

Then it hit him.

He sucked in a breath. “I got it.”

The other two zeroed in on him in unison, with raised eyebrows and heavy stares. The idea on his lips hesitated a fraction of a second—they looked at him so intently!—before he pushed it out into open air.

“Th-The prize, I mean. Okay, so… at championships, they have those coolers, right? And at the end, whatever team wins, they pour the cooler over the coach’s head—”

Sunny made a face. “I’ve never understood that. That doesn’t seem like much of a prize.”

Ah, so Sunny got it! Marcy pointed to him, which seemed to surprise the elf, since he practically jumped. “Exactly! E-Exactly, so… How about, instead of a prize…” he paused for effect, glancing at Hye, who hung on every word with wide brown eyes. “…we make it a punishment for the person who does the_ least_ work?”

For several long seconds, the words hung in the air between them, along with the growing party noise over their heads. Slowly, understanding dawned on Sunny’s face at the same time that a wicked grin spread over Hye’s. The two shared a glance, which at this point Marcy knew was a good sign. When they looked back at him, the nod Hye gave him came as no surprise.

His words, “I _knew_ I liked you,” did, somewhat. They made him fight a smile, puff his chest a little bit.

Sunny seemed to hesitate more, eyeing Hye like he didn’t trust him. Which was fair, after last time. “I guess… just don’t forget what Sam said.”

“Keep things clean and if anyone wants something, get it for them,” Hye paraphrased with a curt nod of finality.

“Be the best waitron,” Marcy shrugged. That, and everything it entailed, was just a matter of trying and doing his best. Right? And if they went with his idea, he’d have extra motivation. He’d been dumped with sports drink before. The ride home afterward was a nightmare. “Straightforward enough.”

“Let’s do it!” Hye beamed at them, all teeth, and thrust his hand into the empty space between all of them, palm down. “On three.”

Sunny rolled his eyes, but put his hand on top of Hye’s. Then they both paused. They looked to Marcy and gave him matching little smiles—waiting for him.

He smiled back and put his hand out.

After their miniature team break, things seemed to move extraordinarily quickly. The event hit full swing in a matter of minutes, with more people than Marcy ever knew came to book fairs. He’d never cared for them before; he didn’t really read books. Sometimes, he was busy. Other times, he simply preferred movies or video games. Something he could see, hear, or influence. 

He could certainly do all three now. Every sense was on high alert, every muscle tensed as if he was waiting for the drop before a play back in football last year. He kept his eyes and ears open for alerts, empty plastic cups sitting unattended, bare paper plates, dropped utensils, popped balloons. He did his best to swoop in and snatch up every single one—that is, unless Hye got to them first. The werewolf moved like a falcon, the way he ran and practically dove for every bit of trash he spotted, weaving around visitors like drill cones, dodging children and conversations with a polite smile and a determined furrow of his brow. Marcy had never seen him so focused.

But perhaps that was simply because he’d only been with them for two weeks. Maybe if he got to stay…

Sunny took a much more diplomatic approach. Marcy didn’t see him divebombing bits of rubber or plastic in the grass, but instead, he’d spot him conversing with some of the folks seated at the picnic tables or standing idly about, murmuring gossip and catch-up summaries as adults always seemed to do. Sunny could insert himself into a discussion flawlessly, and nobody ever reacted as though he were interrupting. He smiled at them, bowed a little every time he took his leave, and served their requests promptly, whether it was a refill on lemonade or a question about the shop.

Just watching the two of them made Marcy want to do better. They seemed so comfortable with the job… comfortable with people, just like Giuseppe. They knew what to say, when to say it, how to say it. People liked them. Meanwhile, all Marcy seemed to get was…

“How’s school going, Marceline?” Ms. Anders, a lady Marcy knew from church, crooned in her cottony rasp. “You’ve been in class, what… two weeks?”

“Uh… a month, actually,” Marcy replied while he tipped the pitcher that Giuseppe had given him over his mother’s glass, refilling her iced tea. “It’s going… okay.”

“Oh good,” the elderly lady said with a smile that somehow looked a bit strained. It could have been Marcy’s imagination though. 

“He’s doing so well.” Mom wrapped one hand around her glass when Marcy was finished, just holding it there for no obvious reason, and put the other over Marcy’s arm—a fond, but staying grip. She cast a smile around the table, at the four other ladies plus Sibyl sitting around her and giving her (and by extension, Marcy) their full attention. “He keeps up with his homework, has this job, rides his bike by himself every day, he’s doing track—ah, he’s just so responsible. I’m so proud of him.”

That was all well and good—very nice of her to say, at least—but he still wished she didn’t have to do it like this. Bragging to her friends about him. Something about it felt… wrong.

“Cross country,” he muttered. Track didn’t start until later in the school year.

“Isn’t the first meet next week?” said Ms. Ramos, who’d joined his mom at the table ten minutes ago and he’d been trying not to worry about that the whole time. Any time teachers and parents hung out, bad things were sure to happen. “Do you get time off for sports events?”

“I… haven’t asked about it yet.” Marcy hadn’t wanted to bring it up with Sam until he knew for sure and certain that he had a permanent position with them. And he hadn’t been certain at all until like… this morning. But these ladies didn’t need to know that.

“He’s been on a sort of trial period with this job,” Mom explained, because apparently they _did_ need to know. “He wanted to make sure they liked him for the position.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t all wrong either. Marcy let it go and decided now was a good time to slip away. He had things to do after all; he couldn’t stand and chat all day. However, the moment she saw him moving, Ms. Anders beckoned him with her own empty glass.

“And why wouldn’t they?” she said, rather haughtily. “You’re a hard worker, you’re well-mannered, disciplined. And you’ve got that special touch, don’t you—that Marceline knack for success.”

Is that what they were calling it at church now? That was… irritating. Marcy did his very best to keep his face as neutral as possible, to hide the twitch of his eyebrows, resist the urge to draw them down. What would they think if they knew just how much he’d screwed up this morning alone?

“He’s good at everything he does,” Mom agreed while Marcy refilled Ms. Anders’ glass. “We’re not worried.”

He couldn’t help but think she really should speak for herself. Immediately, he felt bad. He stomped down on that thought, the one before, the one before that, all the way back to that morning. He shouldn’t feel any of that. His feelings didn’t matter. She was his mother and he needed to respect her, if for nothing else than to avoid letting any kind of rebellious attitude sneak its way into him and risk everything he was trying to accomplish here. If he couldn’t respect her, how would he make a good impression at work?

With a break in the conversation, he took the opportunity to excuse himself. He had things to do.

* * *

Four hours of service, plus an hour each for both setup and tear-down, took a startling amount of energy. Nothing like cross country or football practice, not even close, but it was more than Marcy expected. Maybe it was the constant stream of conversation his brain had to generate for familiar and unfamiliar faces alike. Maybe it was the seemingly endless supply of fake smiles he had to hand out every few seconds, the number of times he saw the same patch of grass in front of the service tables on his way to and from people, or the way Mom kept trying to snag him for commentary like some kind of red carpet reporter, roping him into interviews at the mercy of her friends, no matter how petty the topic. 

Maybe it was how they talked about vampires when one of the ladies mentioned one moving into an apartment in town. Ms. Anders had clutched at her pearl necklace, and Ms. Ramos had asked about the kids at school as if they should be worried about them.

By the time the event closed, the crowd dispersed and, after some last minute chatting with Marcy’s co-workers (to his horror), Mom finally, finally kissed his cheek goodbye and headed out, Marcy felt like he could finally breathe. Sibyl, with a purposefully awkward pat on his arm and an offer of condolences spoiled by her little grin, scampered after and at last they were gone. 

The whole experience was almost made worth it by seeing Hye get doused with the leftover tea. Marcy had thought for sure it would be him, after all the pausing he’d done every time he passed his mom’s table, but Sunny was adamant that Hye had performed the poorest and when asked, Sam agreed. All that focusing had actually kept him from, you know… talking to people. Making conversation. Being friendly. Which was sort of included in the waitron job description, as given by Sam before they started. Marcy might have even felt bad for the werewolf for how dejected he looked, soaked in diluted tea-water, if he hadn’t been busy laughing at it.

The ride back to the shop was a quiet trip, all of them just breathing in the quiet. Even Hye kept his voice down.

Then they were back, unloading, and getting ready to open the shop for the evening. After everything, Marcy almost forgot that the work day wasn’t quite over yet.

They all quickly jumped back into the swing of things, but Marcy felt the weight of everything suddenly settle on his shoulders like some kind of dungeon monster decided to perch on his back for a ride. The time had come, hadn’t it? He’d managed to almost forget about it in the rush of the day, but now it loomed over him—that giant gate, just waiting to be opened. He had the key in his grasp—his answer—ready and waiting to be used.

All he needed now was for Sam to ask about it.

And ask he did, before any customers even showed up, right after Dori flipped the Closed sign to read Open again.

“So,” the boss said, behind the counter for once, leaning up beside the cash register. “How’re you feeling about everything?”

That was a simple question with a complicated answer. Marcy cast a quick glance across the dining space, just to make sure there was no sign of any approaching customers, and then hopped up onto one of the bar stools. “Uh… I was gonna ask you that actually, ‘cause…”

Here it was. The moment of truth. He took a deep breath.

“I know… I messed up a lot. The last two weeks, I mean… I didn’t do a very good job, so I understand if you wanna find someone else. B-but I do like working here! I-it’s fun and there’s food and—”

“What do you mean, ‘messed up’?” Sam raised an eyebrow at him.

Marcy raised one back. He definitely thought it was obvious. Surely Sam knew it full well, after watching him get waylaid at his mother’s table time and time again, or the ruckus he caused with Ji, or the rush this morning to replace cupcakes that Marcy had helped consume before their time. And that was only today; Sam couldn’t have forgotten the chaos of yesterday’s cat caper, or any of the other times he caused a commotion because he’d totally misfired. 

“I mean, the cupcakes, the cat, the table today, the accident, the pinball machine,” just listing them all off made him feel worse about them. He was supposed to be better, do better. How irresponsible could he be? In every case, he could have avoided everything if he’d just gotten a grip and slowed down and thought before he acted. “Take you’re pick, they’re all pretty bad.”

“Oh,” said Sam, as if he truly had just realized that what Marcy was saying was true. “Those. I mean, sure, but.”

Then he chuckled, which didn’t make sense. “Kid… those are just mistakes. It’s not like none of us do things like that. Doesn’t matter to me, anyway.”

“It… doesn’t?”

“Nah, psh.” Sam waved at him, like he was trying to shoo his worry away. “Other things are way more important than that. Like how focused you are with learning. Or how the only thing I’ve heard you complain about since you got here was working in the kitchen with Ji, which frankly is totally fair.”

“I-I,” Marcy interjected before he could stop himself. He sifted through the words buzzing around the forefront of his brain, picking them carefully. “I don’t… I’m good with that, now. I… was wrong before. That’s my bad.”

Yet another thing he’d screwed up. But maybe he was the only one counting.

Sam just smiled. “See, that’s the thing. You’re open to learning. You want to improve. I could see that today too; you’ve only been here two weeks and today, you were leaps and bounds ahead of day one. That’s way more important than the stuff you got wrong. Mistakes are a dime a dozen; it matters more to me that you’re trying to get better. Emphasis on _trying_. I don’t need someone perfect; I need someone who’ll keep trying. Which… is the most any of us can do on a normal day, you know?”

Marcy stared for the briefest of beats in silence and, despite feeling silly for it, he couldn’t help but notice that he’d never actually had somebody say that. That specific thing… about being perfect.

Slowly, the tension seeped from his shoulders. He slouched a little. Propped his elbows on the counter. 

“So,” Sam said again, glancing toward the front door. “What do you think? We’d love to have ya if you want to stick around.”

There it was. Right in front of him. The gate waited, light streaming from underneath it like the door to Dad’s study, warm and inviting. It wanted him to go through it, they wanted him to stay. It was different from others; his parents, his sister, his classmates, they didn’t have a choice, but these people did. Sure, it was just a job, but… it felt bigger than that. Maybe it was just him. Maybe not. Either way, the gate didn’t feel nearly as big as it had before.

He just had to remember why he wanted the job in the first place. For the money. And to prove he wasn’t a kid anymore. 

Sam may have called him ‘kid’, but the way he talked to him was a far cry from those ladies at the library.

It made him believe that maybe, just maybe, he really could actually do this.

Yes. He _would_ handle this. 

So he smiled. And he nodded.

And when the first customer of the evening pushed through the door, jingling the bell, Marcy greeted the freckle-faced boy with the same smile and said, “Hello. It’s Lonnie, right?”


	8. court is adjourned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interesting things happen at Hambleton's while Marcy's not around...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Herrree we go! Last chapter of this arc. :V I'd really love to know what you guys think so far! As always, I hope you enjoy today's shenanigans.

At the back of the little ice cream shop at the end of Shirley Drive, a small door stood at the top of the flight of stairs, barring work from play, business from home. It locked itself to the outside only, accessible with a special set of keys kept safe in a lock box in the boss’s office, where only those who lived within the walls of the upstairs apartment knew they could find it. 

Behind the door, a small living space awaited, cramped with clutter and things, space barely enough for the six people who inhabited it. The furniture consisted of bookshelves, a pastel pink sofa and chairs, a very small table seating a few folding chairs, a widescreen on the far left-hand wall, and a kitchenette boasting a small bar counter and secondhand kitchenware. An electric piano sat tucked in the back corner, a cat tower spiraled up by the hall tree next to the door, and countless polaroids were strung along the rough white walls on ivory twine, making for a dynamic environment only befitting the range of personalities who sprawled casually in its boundaries after a long day of work.

Sam was always the last to join them, and usually he had a dish full of dinner with him when he finally did. He often said he preferred to use the kitchen downstairs for cooking. Nobody could blame him; the downstairs kitchens were an oasis of industrial-grade metal baking behemoths, be them fridges or ovens or countertops, all shiny and cool and much, much easier to clean than the little kitchenette and its aging linoleum and rustic retrograde stove and bubble fridge. 

Tonight, when Sam slid the casserole pan onto the end of the bar counter and pulled out a stack of plates to accompany it, he had an announcement of great interest for the Hambleton’s company.

“Marcy’s an official hire,” he said, moving smoothly as he ever did when surrounded by a kitchen, laying out a stack of napkins and bundle of loose forks.

Hye, quick on his feet as he always was, jumped up and vaulted over the back of the couch just so he could be the first to skid to the counter’s edge and snatch up a plate. His nose was two miles ahead of him, taking in the rich scents of heavy gluten, rich cream, salt and pepper, assorted vegetables, savory chicken and garlic just seeping in thick waves from under the crisp, flaky crust capping the pan and hiding the potpie’s secret treasures from everyone else. So enthralled was he with the savory scent-sations that he almost forgot to respond to the news Sam had presented with it.

“Oh!” leapt from his tongue, absently as he watched with bated breath while Sam cut into the buttery crust with a long knife. “I mean, I knew he would. Why wouldn’t he?”

“He seemed a bit on edge today,” came Dori’s voice close, just behind him, rich like the gravy that settled in the bottom of the pan after Sam lifted out the first helping of potpie. “Did he say anything?”

Sam nodded, an even bob of his head that his slick platinum side part endured with its lasting classic swoop (so neat, compared to Hye’s own reflection in a mirror), as he deposited the creamy mound of goodness onto Hye’s plate, where it puffed out steam like a train engine. “He convinced himself that he’d messed everything up from day one.”

“Aww,” Giuseppe spoke up from his place on the sofa, voice ricocheting off the wall before bouncing into Hye’s ear as it tilted back. “Bless him.”

“How did _he_ mess anything up?” Sunny (best voice in the world) approached on Hye’s left, the smell of his perfume preceding him and mingling with the potpie in a way that made Hye’s nose itch, twitch, sniffle. 

“Oh, he took it back to the beginning, with the pinball,” Sam answered, serving up Dori next and Hye watched every drip of gravy that fell from the spatula. He lunged for a fork and speared a soft cube of yellow potato, before the words sunk into his brain and registered to their fullest implication, to which he couldn’t help but sink lower in his stance just a centimeter or two.

“But that was Hye’s fault.” Sunny, ever the stater of the obvious, didn’t help anything.

Hye munched down on the potato, and alarm bells made his jaw drop right back open when sudden heat flared across his tongue. Hot. Too hot. He puffed, blew, cooled it down and tried again. Good. Then he pouted against the fork prongs. He didn’t need any reminders of his responsibility today. It had taken him a miserable thirty minutes to feel as though every patch of sticky tea film was finally, finally scrubbed from his skin, his hair. That was lesson enough in responsibility, he certainly heard that loud and clear. 

He’d only been trying to stay focused.

“He also mentioned a table today?” Sam glanced around, confusion glinting in his big brown eyes.

Ah, so he’d missed that.

Good.

Hye remembered the hollow wobbling noise of the table teetering on its aluminum legs, the sharp sting of sunlight on pallid skin drowned almost entirely by the louder hiss through gritted fangs, the sudden, stomach-churning scent of burning flesh. He’d smelled it a few other times, on the rare occasion Ji had gotten himself burned by direct sunlight before. He’d certainly never forget any of those times; the smell always brought their memories back. 

He shook his head and scarfed down another bite of potato and crust. Ooh, he got a carrot too! Less hot. Also good. 

“That was _also_ Hye’s fault.” The slow creak of the one board in the middle of the floor, in just the right way—a swinging sort of creak—meant Ji was approaching. 

This time, Hye raised his head up and whirled around. A pair of golden eyes and some ginger bangs blocked his line of sight to the vampire; Giuseppe was waiting in line, though there was no line. No line for Hye to hold up, and no line for him to leave when he ducked around the bigger boy to throw his best pout in the scowling face of the resident mood-killer.

“Was not!” 

Ji scoffed a puff of cold breath and rolled his icy eyes up and across the ceiling. “Yes, it was. You were pitching a fit about the cooler.”

Hye sniffed, making a show of his next bite just to prove just how little he cared about Ji’s argument. “I was _not_ pitching a fit,” he mumbled around the fork and food. 

“It’s not that complicated. All you had to do was set it down; didn’t matter how.”

“I just wanted to put it in the best place!”

“Okay, I honestly don’t care what happened,” Sam crowed over their heads. Hye’s ears flicked back. From the sounds of it, Sunny approached in his socked feet to his right, and Dori was moving off to the left—toward the couch again. “Whatever it was, Marcy blamed himself for it. And the cupcakes, and that wipe out. Kid’s got a killer sense of personal responsibility, I’ll hand him that.”

Ji shuffled past Hye, muttering. “Something you could stand to cultivate.”

Hye twisted his face, dramatizing a version of Ji’s characteristic scowl with added sass before he chomped down a bite of chicken and spat back, “That’s what I have Sunny for.”

Sunny sighed, close enough that the puff of breath displaced a wave of air that brushed across the hairs on the back of Hye’s neck, and Ji didn’t look back on his way to the bathroom, through a little wooden door to the left of the fridge. Maybe he’d stay in there a long time, like he did sometimes. That’d be nice; then Hye could actually enjoy his meal.

“What do you guys think of him?” Dori said, voice clear, like he was turned around backwards on the sofa, which he basically was when Hye looked. He sat sideways, one foot tucked under him, his knee serving as a table, while his other leg dangled off the right side of the sofa cushions. “Marcy, I mean.”

Ah, what a nice question! Hye could answer this one without thinking. The smile stretched across his face without any hesitation and his feet whisked him over to the couch side. “He’s fun! I like him.”

“Fun?” Sunny echoed close on Hye’s non-existent tail, following him when he scooted around past Dori’s foot and flopped down on the other side. The jostling almost sent Dori’s plate into his lap, which would have been just like Dori’s luck, but Sunny—still standing—reached out and caught it before Dori even raised his free hand. While Dori shot the pink boy a look oozing shock and gratitude, Sunny shot Hye a look oozing his seemingly ever-present exasperation. So frequent were those looks, Hye barely registered that it happened, enthralled instead by the bite of gravy-covered green peas he’d found tucked along the bottom of his potpie, where the crust was soft and chewy in the best way. 

“Mm,” he said, words hard to string together in the face of this heavenly bite. He tried anyway, speaking through the creamy goodness. “He looks like a bunny, and he jumps if you poke him to get his attention. And he wore a plaid jacket on Thursday.”

“Oh, he does look like a bunny…” Sam mused, lingering by the counter. That made Hye smirk. He wasn’t the only one!

“And… that’s fun?” Sunny’s seat-taking was much more refined and much less intrusive than Hye’s, settling gently into the spot between Hye and the armrest. Smelling something fresh, certainly not baked, Hye looked at Sunny’s dinner for the first time and spotted a bowl with a handful of lettuce and spinach, with a few peas, grape tomatoes, and a single hard-boiled egg halved over top of it. His usual quick salad. 

Hye nodded emphatically through his bite, almost stabbing his tongue with the fork prongs and consequentially yanking them out of his mouth before he could. “Mm-hmm.”  
Sunny just sighed again.

“He seems like a good kid,” Giuseppe chimed in from where he sunk into the cushy cushion of the recliner to the sofa’s right, next to the door to Sam and Dori’s room. “Super shy, maybe. But it’s not like I’ve gotten to interact with him a whole lot.”

Poor Giuseppe, out in the elements all day. But he said he had fun, so Hye really needed to stop calling him ‘poor’ in his head. Sometimes, Hye wished he could have the same skill with an advertisement as his ginger friend; he always managed to make shakerboarding look actually cool, but alas. Hye would need to actually practice to do that. He couldn’t just push a button, wait three minutes, and be done, like with microwave popcorn. 

“He does seem pretty nervous,” was Sunny’s contribution, a statement of the obvious once again. “I hope we can make him feel more comfortable.”

“That’ll come with time,” Dori reassured.

Sam, sitting at the little table in one of the folding chairs behind the sofa, agreed in a voice that sounded like his ‘final word’ voice. “Exactly. He’ll adjust. Like I told him, what matters most is that he tries. That’s all we ask for from him.”

The corners of Hye’s lips tugged up, bearing his teeth a little more than intended. “Ahh, the wisdom that oft spouts from the lips of the elders in our midst.”

Dori just grinned while Sam laughed without humor, the sound of a thousand age jokes falling on well-accustomed ears. “Yeah, sure.”

“No really, I extend my respect, like a good child.” Hye doffed his fork against his forehead in salute, raising the utensil to the ceiling before scooping up another morsel. Sunny’s face twisted with unadulterated confusion—as usual—but he refrained from commentary. “You gave him good advice, as all good old men do. Old people. Men and women. Actually, women more often, but I mean, you still count as wise old people anyway, so of course I admire your sagely-ness.”

“Does that apply to Ji?” Dori sniped, popping the balloon of Hye’s amusement.

_Rats, he got me._

Hye puffed out his lower lip. “…No.” He inhaled the last of his potpie, savoring the slide of salt and soft crust across his tongue and down his throat before continuing his pout. “He doesn’t count because he’s forever fifteen.”

Giuseppe laughed. At least he found it funny. Nobody else did, and Sunny even frowned, pursing his lips in that way that seemed to pocket all of his disappointment in those two little corners.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Sunny mumbled, as if Hye wasn’t aware.

“I _know_ that,” Hye mumbled back. “Th-that’s… that was hyperbole. He acts like it most of the time, anyway…”

“Hello pot,” said Sam before a bite.

Before Hye could pin his ears back and pout even harder at the words spoken by the elder in the room, a shuffle and click came from across the empty apartment air. The bathroom door. Hye swung his head that way, ears perked, just in time for the door to swing open inward and release the vampire back into their midst. His paper-pale face glistened with the residue of a quick wash, but other than that, he looked no different than when he went in. Hye could never begin to guess why it took Ji so long in there; it wasn’t as if he ate much that could actually—

“Hey old man,” Sam quipped, with a lilt of irony dripping from the syllables. 

Ji just scoffed.

He always just scoffed.

Then he flipped up his hood and hunched, like the very lights on the fixtures overhead offended him almost as much as sunlight through big windows. The shadows flooded over his face, dipping across the rise and fall of his features, his cheekbones, his nose, like some kind of dark mask that added to the curtain of his emo hair, something more to hide behind. Ji stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket, turned away from them all and stepped toward the little door, the sentry of the house.

“Hey, wait, you going somewhere?” Giuseppe called, sitting up straighter in his chair and setting his plate aside on the coffee table, like he was ready to get up and follow. 

Ji waved him away and swung the sentry door open with a quiet _swish_ of the insulator strip on the hardwood, pausing before he left.

“I’m hungry.”

The door let him pass into the shadowy stairwell, his pale hand adorned in glistening claws dragging it shut behind him.


End file.
